Update February 10, 2012: HR 4007 was introduced in the House today to establish the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, NY, and the Harriet Tubman Undergroud Railroad National Historical Park in Maryland. This is companion legislation to S 247, which was recommended by committee in November 2011 to be considered in the Senate.
With the release of a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on January 25, Harriet Tubman National Historical Park and Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park move a step closer to a Senate vote.
Every ten-year-old learns the name Harriet Tubman in school, gaining early respect for the pre-Civil War era’s most famous escaped slave. Tubman’s name became legend when she devoted 11 years of her life to bringing other slaves to freedom.
Tubman aided these slaves in their exodus from southern plantations by way of the Underground Railroad, a covert network of sympathizers—many of them white—who gave fugitive slaves safe passage by hiding them in their homes or barns, and transporting them under cover of darkness to the next safe house. When the dominantly southern Congress passed a law in 1850 requiring northern residents to turn over any fugitive slaves for their return to their owners, Tubman and sympathizers extended the Underground Railroad through Niagara Falls and into Canada, where slavery was illegal.
Born a slave in Dorchester, Maryland, Tubman escaped from the plantation of Edward Brodess in 1849, and returned to the area to rescue members of her own family in 1850. Learning every detail of the marshes, woods and swamps near the Brodess plantation and in nearby Caroline and Talbot counties, she developed a route that she used to aid the escape of 70 slaves. Her knowledge served her well once again as Civil War approached, when she assisted activist John Brown—who called her “General Tubman”—in planning his raid on Harper’s Ferry. Later, she became a spy for the Union army.
Tubman received a piece of land and a house in Auburn, NY, from Senator William Seward in 1857, and she soon purchased the property and lived in the home for the rest of her life. Here she joined Susan B. Anthony in her work for women’s suffrage, took in boarders, married Civil War veteran Nelson Davis, and became very involved with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church. In 1903, she gave a piece of her land to the church for the construction of a home for “aged and indigent colored people.” The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened in 1908.
Today the Harriet Tubman Home is owned by the AME Zion Church and is open to visitors, but it relies on private donations from “persons and organizations that support its mission,” according to the New York History Net website. Becoming a unit of the National Park Service as Harriet Tubman National Historical Park would provide the historic home, the AME Zion Church, and the Home for the Aged with the funds required for their continued preservation, as well as for the expansion of interpretive programs.
The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Caroline, Dorchester, and Talbot counties in Maryland would be created through a cooperative agreement with the state, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Within Blackwater, the National Park Service would acquire the sites of four plantations that figured in Tubman’s life and work, including the Brodess Farm from which she escaped. In addition, an area called Poplar Neck in Caroline County will become part of the park as well.
The CBO report estimates that the land acquisition and creation of the park will cost $24 million over the 2012-2017 period. Most of this would be spent for land acquisition in 2012 (which the CBO report estimates at $7.5 million), while the rest would go for creation of a general management plan and the annual operating costs of the two parks.
The bill, S 247, was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on January 13 of this year.
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