Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

Catherine Clinton had to don her detective gear to put together this biography. What do you do when the figure you are writing about has very few records extant? Enslaved people are often without official documentation of their dates of birth, family circumstances, marriages and relationships. Active participants in the Underground Railroad needed to not keep records, for obvious reasons. A Black woman acting as an “official” spy or nurse for the young United States is not going to have records kept of each spy mission. So the author had to do what she could with records that exist, and extrapolate or postulate about the rest. I do not begrudge her doing so. She did say “Harriet Tubman felt this way...” but instead “Harriet Tubman may have felt this way...” which is valid and nothing more than we as readers would do when given an ambiguous circumstance.

On the other hand, the author did fill in a great deal of the important context of Harriet Tubman's environment. Information about contemporaries and allies such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Seward, and John Brown bring useful insights into the challenges and disparate approaches to battling slavery.

She also pointed out controversies, challenges, and alternate points of view about many things. For example pointing out the dialect used on a plaque in Auburn, New York as problematic and undermining of the stature of such a heroic woman and an example of white-dominant culture's condescending view of an “illiterate fugitive slave.”

Throughout it all, Harriet Tubman's courage and faith shine through and is inspiring. Her sense of purpose, single-minded focus on justice, ingenuity, grace under pressure, and the circles within which she socialized belie any humble beginning as an unlettered enslaved woman. I have a better appreciation of her as a giant among heroes and found the book very enjoyable.