At The Cusp of Woman and Black

February is Black History Month, and March is Women’s History Month, so here at the cusp I’m going to repost an oldie from my early days of blogging, about my personal hero, Harriet Tubman. Originally posted April 13, 2006.

In yesterday’s post, which was a meme of six weird things about me, I mentioned that my personal real life hero is Harriet Tubman. I admire her for her grace, her courage, her determination, and her strength of conviction. She was a woman who wanted freedom, and found a way to attain it…once she had tasted the sweet flavor, however, she determined that she must free others, so she went back into harm’s way, so that she might rescue others. I’m assuming you all know of her work. Of how she, along with the help of the underground railroad, spirited slaves out of the south to their freedom in Canada. How she served as a nurse and a spy during the Civil War. How she became active with the suffragettes, and made speeches about women’s rights. How many of us would find the strength to do 1/10th of what she did? Who among us would, after escaping with our lives, after having grown up suffering severe beatings at the hands of a cruel master, be able to muster the strength to go back, into danger, where our capture would mean horrors beyond our imagining. And she did this again, and again, and again. Her life was an example to us all.

I started this post with the simple idea of telling a cute story…how Maya told me yesterday, that when she was little, and they were supposed to talk about heroes at school, and I told her about my hero, Harriet Tubman, she imagined her as being able to fly, and that she wore a cape. That she flew down from the sky and rescued slaves from the south, like Superman or Wonder Woman. I love that mental picture. But even that doesn’t compare with the real Harriet Tubman.

Do you have a real-life hero?