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Harriet Tubman > An American Icon
An American Icon
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(Collections of Seward
House)
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Harriet Tubman’s recognition is exceptionally widespread, in part because of an abundance of children’s literature featuring her. Remarkably, until 2003, there were only two published adult biographies of Tubman (Bradford:1869; Conrad:1943). The phenomenon of the legend outstripping the historical figure has led at least one scholar to investigate the subject – Historian Milton Sernett published Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History in 2007. In an earlier communication he wrote:
"Harriet Tubman's name graces scores of public
institutions, voluntary organizations, good causes, and, most fittingly,
two memorial postage stamps. Each year thousands of visitors, some
on pilgrimages from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, come to the Harriet
Tubman Home in Auburn, New York, where they encounter busloads of
school children who have grown up on stories of 'the Moses of her
People' written specifically for them. In short, Harriet Tubman
is an American icon. Curiously, Earl Conrad's 1943 biography, General
Harriet Tubman, remains the most recent attempt at a comprehensive
biography of Tubman."
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