Angel in Disguise

Angel In Disguise

I remember the first time I heard about Harriet Tubman and the Under Ground

Railroad. I was in the sixth grade and eleven years old. My social studies teacher showed the class a film about the network of people and Harriet Tubman who helped slaves escape to freedom through a passage to the North. She explained how Harriet Tubman who was a runaway slave herself, risked her life to save her family and others who were slaves at the time.

As a child Harriet Tubman was a hero to me. Now that I'm older I realize just how important her story is to everyone and especially women. Harriet was thirty years old when she escaped from slavery. She risked her life to be free and to free others. A white neighbor told her how to find the first house on her path to Canada. At the first house she was put into a wagon covered with a sack and transported to the next stop.

Harriet Tubman, full-length portrait, seated in ch...

A woodcut image of Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, an African American abolitionist a...

She had to wade through swamp water and hide in the woods. Her master knew she had escaped and was looking for her with guns and dogs. She wore the soles out on her shoes from walking in the woods. She was weak from lack of food. She had to trust white people she had never seen or didn't know. She would get instructions on what to do at each station she stopped in and go from there. The night she escaped she didn't know exactly what to do or were to go but the Underground Railroad conductors helped her get through the middle passage.

Harriet took three hundred slaves to freedom including all of her family after she found out the way to Canada through the Under Ground Railroad. She risked her...