Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People - A Book Review

The underground freedom network and the aboveground social network of Araminta Ross: Things you might not know about the sin of slavery, the passion for liberation, and the life of a great woman!

Over the past year, in my desire to better understand the Civil War and its implications for appreciating the perspectives and the “setting in life” of our African American siblings today, I have been reading about characters and events of that time.  Last winter, I read a biography of the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight.  I wrote extensively about the book in blog posts on March 13 and 14.  Subsequently, to understand President Abraham Lincoln with more than a cursory understanding from high school history classes, I read Jon Meacham’s biography, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle and blogged on May 15.  My interest in further understanding the Civil War (not the blood and guts of battles or war strategy, but the politics and the people) led me to another recently published book that has been on the New York Times best seller list, The Demon Of Unrest: A Saga Of Hubris, Heartbreak, And Heroism At The Dawn Of The Civil War, by Erik Larson.  This book covered the brief period of history from Lincoln’s election to the beginning of the Civil War with the first shots fired at Fort Sumpter.  I wrote a blog post about that book on August 2.

My interest in the period, the people, and that history continues!  I just finished reading Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, by Tiya Miles.  I wanted to gain more knowledge than my high school understanding that she was a famed conductor on the Underground Railroad.  Tiya Miles’ biography uncovers Harriet Tubman as a complex person, far more significant than a courageous liberator of slaves (though that would be enough for a worthwhile story!).  In fact, only one chapter of seven in the book is devoted to details of escaping slavery herself and trips back that she made to rescue many other slaves from bondage.  The other six chapters of the book explain the evolution of Harriet Tubman as a multidimensional person.  According to the author, “Harriet Tubman has bequeathed many ideas for her intellectual descendants – womanists, feminists, tree huggers, freedom-lovers, shelter-makers, caretakers, and earth-walkers.”  I learned many things from Harriet Tubman’s life that inspire me…perhaps some of those things may do likewise for you!  I also stumbled across a big surprise that may keep you reading this post to the end (it is a long one!).  Can anyone say, Godincidence…or at least, a huge coincidence! 

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta “Minty” Ross around 1822, a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  From a very early age, slavery was her boogeyman and a source of terror.  Her witness to older siblings being sold off and taken away from the family left an indelible mark of pain on her soul and contributed much to the shape of her adult life as a liberator.

Tiya Miles notes, “two themes central to Tubman’s worldview: spirituality (her belief in God, heaven, and unseen powers) and ecology (her belief in the integrity and import of relationships among all natural beings.)”  Further, “For Tubman, slavery was an evil, and religious awakening was also a political awakening as she realized that the God of her heart and community championed liberation.  She stood among peers who believed liberation had ‘spiritual and social dimensions’ with the purpose of ‘restoring a sense of self as a free person and a spiritual being…’”

Tiya Miles biographical perspective of Harriet Tubman, which may be unique among other authors, is that Tubman had an “eco-spiritual worldview.”  She argues that Tubman may be the most famous Black woman ecologist in U.S. history, though this is not traditionally the way that biographers present her.  In her youth and prior to her escape from slavery, Tubman was a woodswoman.  She used her knowledge of nature and of the Eastern Shore Maryland countryside to further her goals for freedom.  Tubman said, “I was getting fitted for the work the Lord was getting me ready for.”  In Miles understanding, “Harriet Tubman’s relationship with entities of the natural world, of which she was also feeling a part, was synergistic, empowering, and impactful.  Her awareness of geographical positioning and her knowledge of how nature might come to her aid were second only to her faith in God and seemed at times to be fused with it.  Following what she described as God’s guidance, Harriet directed her companions to hide behind tress, within swamps, and in “potato holes.’”

Based on Tiya Miles writing, I would describe Harriet Tubman as a mystic.  Her faith in God was deep, almost a blind faith, in my estimation.  She had numerous visions and dreams and trusted that she heard God’s voice directing her life and experiences.  In her youth, she was victim of a significant brain injury from an iron weight thrown by a slaveholder (Tubman was interceding for another slave) that struck her in the head and fractured her skull.  She barely survived this incident and was bedridden for a long time afterward.  Throughout the remainder of her life, she experienced what might be considered epileptic seizures that came out of nowhere and debilitated her.  (All the more reason to understand her efforts to liberate slaves as courageous and miraculous!)  These seizures resided alongside her other mystical experiences.

Interestingly for such a prominent historical figure, though perhaps not surprisingly, Harriet Tubman was illiterate.  She had no time to learn to read and write!  Therefore, there are no primary source writings extant.  We must rely on others for her filtered history.  Typically, her biographers were white, middle-class, and anti-slavery women.  Since Tiya Miles could not connect with what was the “authentic” Harriet Tubman, she took an interesting approach by relying on women of the period who were similar to Harriet Tubman; Black, female, and holy (faithful and spiritual).  They were all early feminists in a patriarchal church of their day.  Miles names this movement and genre of writing “ecowomanist.”  (I was previously unaware of this genre of writing.  It is likely that you are also unfamiliar with it?)  On this subject, Miles should speak for herself, “Ecowomanism derives from womanism, a body of thought and set of methods taken up by Black women theologians in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.  I adopted an ecowomanist approach for this project in part because it seems uniquely fitting for Tubman’s own philosophical and phenomenological orientation and in part because it seems emphatically fitting for own times.”  (Though not familiar with Ecowomanist theology, I am familiar with Womanist theology as we studied Dr. Wilma Gafney and her, A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, in adult Sunday School at Lutheran Church of the Resurrection.) 

In other words, Miles finds the roots of an evolving and contemporary theological genre of writing and thinking in Harriet Tubman 150 years ago!  Miles suggests that Harriet Tubman was concerned as much with justice for the earth as with justice for people.  That is ecowomanism.  Of late, I have written and preached often about the unity of all things, particularly humanity and the animate and inanimate world of Creation.  It is so interesting to consider Harriet Tubman as an antecedent of this thinking!  We might also weave Native American spirituality into this conversation (see Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, another book that I have blogged about).  What an amazing patchwork!

Speaking of patchwork, unsurprisingly, Tiya Miles was unable to write a biography of Harriet Tubman without weaving (pun intended) Frederick Douglass into the story.  She melds them together in an interesting way.  “Harriet Tubman often appears alongside Frederick Douglass in our national memory of abolitionist heroes, the female yin to his male yang.  But while Douglass is heralded for lithe orations and sophisticated writing, Tubman is more often represented as a doer, not a thinker….But Harriet Tubman’s activist agenda did reflect a core concept – the notion that freedom was for everyone and that Black women, among the most oppressed, could lead the way to liberation.  The boldness of Tubman’s freedom theorem, and her willingness to risk her life to defend it, inspired theorists who came after her…”

Many spiritualists (e.g., Richard Rohr and Thomas Merton) have maintained that both contemplation and action are required of the Christian life.  In fact, they complement and strengthen each other.  Contemplation (prayer) leads us into the world to serve as disciples (action).  The experiences of discipleship lead us back into the prayer chamber to reflect on what we have learned from our experiences.  Tubman and Douglass may look like the yin and yang of faith.  I would argue that both were faithful people of prayer and action and that is what kept them from burnout and dedicated to the passionate cause of Black liberation.

I suppose that it is not possible to offer a biography of Araminta Ross without some recitation of her work as a liberator on the Underground Railroad.  As noted, Harriet Tubman was born around 1822.  She married John Tubman in 1844 and changed her birth name, taking on the first name of her mother and the last name of her husband.  She escaped slavery in 1849, at about the age of 27.  Her escape was bittersweet in that she had to leave her beloved family behind (her Purgatory!).  She had a fundamental belief, chiefly from her faith, that no human being should be enslaved.  This led to her “calling” in life.  She had a blind faith that informed her that God was with her in her efforts to free slaves and that if she were apprehended, somehow that would be God’s will.  (There was a significant bounty for her capture.)  It is estimated that she undertook thirteen trips and freed seventy to eighty people, including her own parents and other family members.  Much of the details of her efforts remains hidden in secret to this day.

Harriet Tubman also played a role as a military scout and spy.  Her connection to trustworthy allies and her familiarity with the social and geographical landscape contributed valuable intelligence to the Union army.  She was the first known woman to play a leadership role in an armed raid in the U.S. military.

Tiya Miles devotes a chapter of Tubman’s biography to her work as a caretaker.  “In her winter years, the long, next phase of her life between the 1860’s and 1890’s, she planned, built, and tended an intentional community of the redeemed.  Harriet had come a long way from the girl called Minty who slept and ate with the piglets, but she still felt a continued closeness with the natural and nonhuman world around her.  The location of her snug farmette, perched on the outer edge of Auburn (NY), had features in common with the Eastern Shore of her youth.”  With the help of others, she was a benefactor for many.  She managed a boardinghouse and assisted living center in her modest home.  She saw her guests as blessings rather than burdens and did not charge for their stays. 

Miles sums up Harriet Tubman’s life poetically, “In the final decades of her distinctive life, the great leader of an underground freedom network invested in an aboveground social network rooted in Black-owned land that functioned as communal space.  Other holy women like her had thrived in community once their travels slowed, establishing informal circles of support and formal institutions while feeling that they did their Lord’s work.”

This Sunday, the Church celebrates All Saints Day.  In the Lutheran faith, we do not view the saints as our intercessors to God, but rather as those who led exemplary lives and can serve as inspirations for our own lives.  Harriet Tubman (to my knowledge) is not included in any list of Church saints.  After reading her biography, it occurs to me that she might be a good addition!

As for the big surprise – Godincidence - that I noted in the introduction to this post, the last page of the book has a photograph of Beacon of Hope, a sculpture by Wesley Wofford that depicts Harriet Tubman giving her younger self the key to remove a shackle while holding up the North Star (remember, Harriet found God’s inspiration in Creation).  I felt compelled to find a photograph of the sculpture for this blog post and to learn more about it.  Low and behold, on October 16, 2024, the sculpture arrived at the Underground Railroad Heritage Center in Niagara Falls.  (Niagara Falls was a significant stop on the Underground Railroad because The Fugitive Slave Act allowed captured slaves to be returned to their owners, therefore, slaves had to be transported to Canada to insure their freedom.)  The sculpture will be there until January 2, 2025.  In addition, there will be a commemoration of Harriet Tubman on November 15 (two weeks from today!).  Guess who will be visiting the Underground Railroad Heritage Center on November 15 and attending the commemoration?  Cindy and me!!!