A Moses for the Slaves – A Life Helping Others
SUBJECTS — U.S. History 1812- 1865; African-American; Maryland;
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING — Human Rights; Female Role Model; Breaking Out; Courage; Disabilities;
MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS — Responsibility.
AGE; 13+
Rated PG-13; 2019; 2 hours, 5 minutes; Color.
Give your students new perspectives on race relations, on the history of the American Revolution, and on the contribution of the Founding Fathers to the cause of representative democracy. Check out TWM’s Guide:
TWM offers the following worksheets to keep students’ minds on the movie and direct them to the lessons that can be learned from the film.
Teachers can modify the movie worksheets to fit the needs of each class. See also TWM’s Historical Fiction in Film Cross-Curricular Homework Project.
Harriet Tubman was without doubt one of America’s greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity enabled her to escape from slavery in 1849. She then became an “abductor” for the Underground Railroad. With a price on her head and facing certain torture and death if she were caught, Harriet Tubman went back into the South 13 times freeing the rest of her family and many other slaves. It is estimated that she shepherded some 70 – 300 slaves to freedom. She was also instrumental in freeing 750 slaves in one military operation during the Civil War.
This film is well-grounded historical fiction, giving a sense of the times and providing a reasonably accurate portrayal of the almost superhuman exploits of its heroine.
Awards: Awards Season Not Begun
Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Not only does Harriet tell the story a black female role model, it also demonstrates the humanitarian vision of hundreds of thousands of Americans, black and white, who worked to end slavery. It is accurate to call slavery the original sin of the United States. However, it is also true that before and during the Civil War many Americans put their lives and livelihoods at risk to eradicate this great evil. They did this with no thought of reward but in the hope of redeeming the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the soul of the country itself. (Can anyone imagine the U.S. playing its role in WW I, WW II, and the Cold War if slavery had still existed?) While it is a tragedy that the hopes of African-Americans for equality were frustrated by the hundred years of Jim Crow and that some discrimination against black Americans still exists, the idealism and sacrifice of those who worked to end slavery before and during the Civil War is an important chapter in American history. Harriet Tubman was one of the foremost of those brave women and men whose moral vision and humanitarian spirit inspired them to fight for the end of slavery.
There are some elements of historical error, however, these weaknesses will become strengths when pointed out to students.
This film is now out in theaters. See it with your children, share their marvel at the accomplishments of this illiterate slave. Talk to them about the abolitionists and share with them the fact that Harriet Tubman labored to help others all her life. She lived for approximately 90 years, until 1913, and in her old age was active in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Share with your children some of the scenes that accurately show her exploits.
The film conveys a correct sense of the life of Harriet Tubman through the Civil War. Many of the exploits shown in the film actually occurred. Here are some samples.
Teachers might find it helpful to read to the class or to have the class read the following selection. Ask the class to put themselves into Harriet Tubman’s shoes. For a pdf version of what follows to be printed and used as a handout, click here.
Dr. Martin Luther King was, in addition to being a civil rights activist, a scholar. He had a Ph.D. in Divinity and was well-read in philosophy and history. In his book, Where Do We Go from Here? (1967), Dr. King summarized the findings of historian Kenneth Stampp derived from manuals for slave owners in the American South on how to keep psychological control of their slaves. Note that the term “bondsman” is another word for slave.
First, those who manage the slaves had to maintain strict discipline. One master said, “Unconditional submission is the only footing upon which slavery should be placed.” Another said, “The slave must know that his master is to govern absolutely and he is to obey implicitly, that he is never, for a moment, to exercise either his will or judgment in opposition to a positive order.” Second, the masters felt that they had to implant in the bondsman a consciousness of personal inferiority. This sense of inferiority was deliberately extended to his past. The slaveowners were convinced that in order to control the Negoes, the slaves “had to feel that African ancestry tainted them, that their color was a badge of degradation.” The third step in the training process was to awe the slaves with a sense of the masters’ enormous power. It was necessary, various owners said, “to make them stand in fear.” The fourth aspect was the attempt to “persuade the bondsman to take an interest in the master’s enterprise and the accept his standards of good conduct.” Thus the master’s criteria of what was good and true and beautiful were to be accepted unquestioningly by the slaves. The final step, according to Stampp’s documents, was “to impress Negroes with their helplessness: to create in them a habit of perfect dependence on their masters.”
Not all slave owners fully complied with this advice and, as shown by Harriet Tubman’s efforts to enforce the will of a former master giving her freedom through her mother and Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery, not all slaves allowed themselves to be completely controlled psychologically. However, this background shows some of the difficulties that all fugitive slaves, including Harriet Tubman, had to overcome in their decision to make the break for freedom.
Moreover, the difficulty in making the decision to run was only the beginning of the obstacles faced by fugitive slaves. Harriet Tubman’s experience is summarized in the following passage from Harriet Tubman’s authorized biography, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People, pages 29 – 31 of the 1886 edition.
A slave had heard that Harriet and two of her brothers were to be sold away to the South “very soon, perhaps tomorrow.” At the time, Harriet was between 20 and 25 years old. She and the two brothers decided to make a break for freedom.
The brothers started with her, but [they thought that] the way was strange, the north was far away, and all unknown, the masters would pursue and recapture them, and their fate would be worse than ever before; and so they broke away from her, and bidding her good- bye, they hastened back to the known horrors of slavery, and the dread of that which was worse.
Harriet was now left alone, but after watching the retreating forms of her brothers, she turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. . . . For,” said she, ‘‘I had reasoned dis out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de Oder; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when de time came for me to go, de Lord would let dem take me.”
And so without money, and without friends, she started on through unknown regions; walking by night, hiding by day. . . . Without knowing whom to trust, or how near the pursuers might be, she carefully felt her way, and by her native cunning, or by God given wisdom, she managed to apply to the right people for food, and sometimes for shelter; though often her bed was only the cold ground, and her watchers the stars of night. From Bradford, Moses, 29-31.
Sarah Bradford recounts the following about Thomas Garrett, the white Quaker who allowed his home to be used as a station on the Underground Railroad and aided in the escape of 2,500 to 3,000 slaves. After Harriet Tubman’s escape Garret was one of the Station Masters of the UGRR with whom she worked when she returned to Maryland to lead members of her family and other slaves to freedom. Bradford, p. 44 -46; Clinton, pp. 90- 92, 114.
1. What can we learn from the life of Harriet Tubman?
Suggested Response:
There is no one correct response to this question. A good discussion will cover the concepts of bravery, persistence (keep on going), ingenuity, and caring for others.
2. Why did the Underground Railroad operate and maintain hiding places for fugitive slaves in Norther states such as New York?
Suggested Response:
After passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 slave-masters and slave-catchers could seize fugitive slaves in any part of the country. Thus, fugitive slaves were only safe in Canada. As a result, the UGRR expanded its operations and included freedom lines through the Northern states to Canada.
3. Tell the class, if students do not already know, that there was a lot of resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Mobs of people, white and black, would attempt to rescue fugitive slaves who had been arrested by U.S. Marshalls or seized by slave-catchers empowered to act under the law. (See e.g., See Braddock, pp. 116 – 128 and 143 – 149.). On occasion, people died in these encounters. Juries would not convict people who were clearly guilty of attempting to interfere with the law. People also covertly resisted the law by participating in the Underground Railroad. Compare this to the non-violent direct action of the Indian movement for independence led by Mahatma Gandhi and the U.S. Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Then ask the question, when is violent resistance justified, when is covert resistance justified, and when is non-violent direct action called for. In the discussions bring in applicable current events.
Suggested Response:
Strong discussions will include the following concepts. Non-violent direct action requires an oppressor class for whom appeals to their better nature and fundamental concepts of fairness may lead to change. Examples are the British public in the case of the movement for Indian independence and the American public in the case of the U.S. Civil Rights movement. Violent resistance and subterfuge is required when the resisters are facing people and institutions in the sway of abject evil, such as the Southern slave holders and the Nazis.
Each of the discussion questions can serve as an essay prompt.
This Learning Guide was written by James Frieden and was last updated on November 16, 2019.
TWM offers the following worksheets to keep students’ minds on the movie and direct them to the lessons that can be learned from the film.
Teachers can modify the movie worksheets to fit the needs of each class. See also TWM’s Historical Fiction in Film Cross-Curricular Homework Project.
“I say that the best way to address this issue is to address it forthrightly, and straightforwardly, and embrace the complicated history and the complicated presence of America. On the one hand, that’s right, slavery, and segregation, and racism, and white supremacy is deeply entrenched in America. At the same time, there has been a tremendous alternative tradition, a tradition against slavery, a tradition against segregation, a tradition against racism.
I mean, after all in the past 25 years, the United States of America has seen an African-American presence. As we speak, there is an African-American vice president. As we speak, there’s an African- American who is in charge of the Department of Defense. So we have a complicated situation. And I think the best way of addressing our race question is to just be straightforward, and be clear, and embrace the tensions, the contradictions, the complexities of race in American life. I think we need actually a new vocabulary.
So many of the terms we use, we use these terms over and over, starting with racism, structural racism, critical race theory. These words actually have been weaponized. They are vehicles for propaganda. I think we would be better off if we were more concrete, we talked about real problems, and we actually used a language that got us away from these overused terms that actually don’t mean that much. From Fahreed Zakaria, Global Public Square, CNN, December 26, 2021
Give your students new perspectives on race relations, on the history of the American Revolution, and on the contribution of the Founding Fathers to the cause of representative democracy. Check out TWM’s Guide: TWO CONTRASTING TRADITIONS RELATING TO RACISM IN AMERICA and a Tragic Irony of the American Revolution: the Sacrifice of Freedom for the African-American Slaves on the Altar of Representative Democracy.
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