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World in Progress: Harriet Tubman — a life fighting slavery

Michael Marek | Anja Steinbuch
March 11, 2020

Famous anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman has been inspiring abolitionists in the US since escaping slavery in 1849. She went on to help hundreds as a conductor of the "underground railroad," a network helping escaped slaves to safety, and she even fought in the US civil war.

https://p.dw.com/p/3ZDLc

She is famous in the US, but the former slave who became an inspiring abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, is much less known elsewhere. Tubman was born two centuries ago, in the early 1820s, a small, energetic woman — and one of more than 2 million slaves in the United States. But she escaped from slavery in 1849 — and then helped hundreds of other slaves to flee. Even today, this courageous woman inspires people's struggle for freedom, and her image was set to be put on the US 20 dollar bill this year — but that's been postponed by the current US president. For her depiction of Tubman in the 2019 biopic "Harriet," actor Cynthia Erivo (pictured above) received several award nominations.

Anja Steinbuch and Michael Marek went to Chesapeake Bay to trace Harriet Tubman's story and meet those who keep Tubman's heritage alive today. Neil King presents the report.