Real Heroes Read online

  Lessons from Prudence Crandall

  Fight prejudice: Prudence Crandall called prejudice “the mother of abominations.” Her conscience would not allow her to ignore the educational desires of young black women. To satisfy those desires, she fought both her town and her state.

  Remember government’s proper place: Education is often thought of as something best provided by government. The Prudence Crandall story, however, is about the vision and courage of a woman who had to fight government to educate young black girls.

  11

  Harriet Tubman

  She Never Lost a Passenger

  In April 2016 the U.S. treasury secretary announced that a woman’s image will adorn Federal Reserve currency for the first time. The image will be that of Harriet Tubman. It may, however, be a dubious honor to appear on something that declines so regularly in value. Without a doubt, this woman will impart more esteem to the bill than the bill will to her. Her value is far more solid and enduring.

  Slavery was once ubiquitous, and even intellectually respectable. That began to change in the late eighteenth century; by 1807, Britain has ended its slave trade, and in 1834 it liberated the enslaved throughout its jurisdiction. (See chapter 8.) Before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America in 1865, American blacks risked everything attempting to escape from their masters, who sometimes pursued them all the way to the Canadian border. Tubman, herself a fugitive slave, became the most renowned “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, a network of trails for escapees from the antebellum South to the North. As many as 100,000 slaves risked life and limb traveling its routes. It was the most dangerous “railroad” in the world.

  Strength and Courage

  Born Araminta Ross in 1822 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Tubman survived the brutalities of bondage for twenty-seven years. Three of her sisters had been sold to distant plantation owners. For her entire life she carried scars from frequent whippings. Once, when she refused to restrain a runaway slave, she was bashed in the head with a two-pound weight, causing lifelong pain, migraines, “buzzing” in her ears, and seizures. She bolted for freedom in 1849, making her way to the free state of Pennsylvania and its city of brotherly love, Philadelphia.

  “I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming,” she later wrote.

  I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came: I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there. Oh, how I prayed then, lying all alone on the cold damp ground! “Oh, dear Lord,” I said. “I haven’t got no friend but you. Come to my help, Lord, for I’m in trouble! Oh, Lord! You’ve been with me in six troubles, don’t desert me in the seventh!”

  Tubman bravely ventured thirteen times back into slave states to escort at least seventy escapees to northern states and to Canada. Though schoolchildren across America now learn of Tubman’s deeds, biographer Kate Clifford Larson makes a convincing case that the lengths Tubman and her colleagues went to secure freedom for others are underappreciated. In Bound for the People, Larson calls Tubman’s efforts to free slaves “monumental and dangerous”; the escape missions she organized “reveal intricate planning involving complex networks of black and white supporters.” The fact that she so frequently returned to the Eastern Shore on these missions “set Tubman apart from even those brave souls who swelled the routes of the Underground Railroad,” Larson writes. “For self-liberators such as Tubman, it was unusual to return to the land of their enslavers, risking capture, reenslavement, or even lynching to help others seek freedom.”

  Words of Wisdom from Harriet Tubman

  “I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there.”

  Think about what was involved in any one of these missions. Tubman and her associates had to cover perhaps a hundred miles, often by foot, under cover of darkness. Slave catchers and their packs of vicious dogs were a constant threat, but as Larson notes, any number of natural dangers could derail a journey: “Spiny sweet gum burrs, thorny thickets, the sharp needles of marsh grass, and icy paths in the winter all took their toll on the feet and limbs of struggling runaways. The Eastern Shore’s numerous rivers, streams, and wetlands presented a serious hindrance, particularly to runaways who could not swim. Wet clothing could draw unwanted attention, and cold weather could seriously debilitate drenched and hungry escapees.”

  Extraordinary courage was just one of the traits Tubman displayed in leading so many people to freedom. She became a master of disguise, presenting herself as an elderly woman or even a man. She displayed quick thinking to keep from arousing the suspicions of white travelers she encountered, averting disaster a number of times. Walking at night in the woods, often alone, she displayed an unerring sense of direction; she said she could find her way by the stars and natural signs “as well as any hunter.” She saw through her missions despite the seizures she continued to experience.

  “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” Tubman famously recounted, “and I can say what most conductors can’t say: I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” Those passengers included her aging parents, her three brothers, their wives, and many of their children.

  Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse during the Civil War, Tubman morphed quickly into an armed scout and spy. She became the war’s first woman to lead an armed expedition when she guided the Combahee River Raid, an expedition that liberated more than seven hundred slaves in South Carolina.

  For her service to the government—tending to newly freed slaves, scouting into enemy territory, and nursing wounded soldiers—she was treated shamefully and shabbily. She was denied compensation and didn’t receive a pension for her war duties until 1899. She took in boarders and worked long hours at odd jobs to make ends meet.

  Tubman spent her last decades caring for others, especially the sick and aged. She spoke publicly on behalf of women’s right to vote. For relief from her head injury, she endured brain surgery in Boston in the late 1890s. She refused anesthesia, preferring simply to bite down on a bullet. In her words, the surgeon “sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable.” She died in 1913 at the age of ninety-one—a real hero to the very end.

  Recognition

  Recognition of Tubman’s heroism came late, but some of her contemporaries appreciated her extraordinary contributions and courage. The famous abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass paid Tubman this tribute in an August 1868 letter:

  Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day—you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and footsore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt “God bless you” has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.

  In 2014 an asteroid was named for Tubman. In my book, that beats a Federal Reserve note hands down.

  Lessons from Harriet Tubman

  Don’t stop at securing your own freedom: Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery but was not content simply to have her own freedom. She risked her life multiple times to return to slave states and liberate dozens of fellow human beings.

  To have real courage, be strong: Tubman’s story reminds us that moral courage and physical courage often go hand in hand. Though plagued by seizures, she risked her newfound freedom—even her life—for the
freedom of others.

  12

  Black Entrepreneurs

  Models Too Often Forgotten

  Since Black History Month was inaugurated in 1976, Americans have made special note each February of the achievements of black citizens. African Americans have played important and often inspirational roles in shaping the country’s history, from the days of slavery through Jim Crow to substantial, if not yet complete, political and social equality today.

  It’s understandable that in highlighting this important minority group, we heavily emphasize those men and women who escaped bondage or those in more recent decades who led the civil rights movement.

  Frederick Douglass, the eloquent abolitionist and former slave, extolled the importance of constructive agitation when he declared in an 1857 speech:

  The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

  Black history in America, however, isn’t just about overcoming slavery and discrimination. It’s also about the less-familiar names of black citizens who excelled at entrepreneurship, invention, the creation of wealth. They are numerous and deserve greater recognition for their heroism.

  McCoy, Reynolds, and Pelham: Inventors and Engineers

  Twenty years ago my good friend and favorite historian, Dr. Burton Folsom, told me about three such people—Elijah McCoy, Humphrey H. Reynolds, and Fred Pelham.

  McCoy (pictured at the beginning of this chapter) was born in 1843 in Colchester in the province of Ontario, Canada, where his parents had settled as fugitives from slavery. The family returned to the United States five years later and settled in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Though they were poor, their hard work and thrifty habits eventually paid off. Elijah was sent to Scotland at age fifteen to study mechanical engineering, and he returned afterward to work for the Michigan Central Railroad.

  Words of Wisdom from Booker T. Washington

  “Character, not circumstances, makes the man.”

  Locomotives at the time overheated easily, and trains were forced to stop often to apply oil to engine parts to reduce friction. McCoy invented a “lubricating cup” that applied the oil without the need to halt the journey. He secured a patent for it in 1872 and continued to improve the device for years thereafter.

  “Others tried to imitate McCoy’s invention, but he kept ahead of them with his superior engineering skills,” writes Folsom. “His standard of quality was so high that to separate his lubricating cup from cheaper imitations it became known as ‘the real McCoy,’ which many believe to be the origin of the famous phrase. The grateful management of the Michigan Central promoted McCoy and honored him as a teacher and innovator for the railroad.”

  That 1872 patent was the first of fifty-seven McCoy picked up during a long and productive life. When he was seventy-seven, he earned one for an improved airbrake lubricator; at age eighty, he patented a vehicle wheel tire. He founded the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company in Detroit in 1920 to produce and market his inventions and died in 1929 at eighty-six, a well-loved and celebrated achiever.

  While McCoy improved the operation of locomotives at the front of the train, Humphrey H. Reynolds made the rail cars more comfortable in the back. Whether the locomotive burned coal or wood, the windows remained shut in the cars behind so the smoke wouldn’t choke the passengers. On hot days, those cars could be unbearable.

  Reynolds was a porter for the Pullman Company and knew just how bad the conditions could be. So he did something about the problem. In 1883 he invented a ventilator that permitted air to flow into passenger cars while keeping out the dust and soot. When the Pullman Company tried to grab the patent rights for the idea, Reynolds quit his job and successfully sued for $10,000. He thereby won the right to profit from his own invention, which greatly enhanced the number of Americans willing to ride the rails no matter the weather.

  Fred Pelham not only built bridges to people metaphorically; he constructed real ones, too, all over Michigan. Some of them (like his unique “skew-arch bridge” in Dexter) are still standing more than a century after his untimely death in 1895 at age thirty-seven.

  Pelham’s parents were free blacks in Virginia who left that state in the 1850s on a quest for opportunity in Michigan. Fred excelled in mathematics and civil engineering at the University of Michigan, where he was president of his class in 1887 and the first black man to graduate with an engineering degree. He designed and built at least eighteen bridges, known for their beauty and structural integrity.

  Booker T. Washington: The Importance of Character

  Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) is still reasonably well known, but he fell out of favor with black leadership in the 1960s. That’s when Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs shifted the focus away from black entrepreneurship and ushered in government handouts. The message of Washington, who was born a slave, had always been what he called “self-help” through education, employment, and starting a business. He also stressed personal integrity. “Character,” he said, “not circumstances, makes the man.”

  Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama to educate blacks to develop their talents for America’s industrial society. Business enterprise would be the ticket to progress, he felt. “More and more thoughtful students of the race problem,” he said, “are beginning to see that business and industry constitute what we may call the strategic points in its solution.”

  George Washington Carver: Pioneer

  Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, I learned to admire George Washington Carver (1864–1943) as another great black achiever. A pioneering botanist and inventor, he devised techniques for replenishing depleted soils and popularized the peanut. He researched, experimented, and taught at the Tuskegee Institute for forty-seven years. Time magazine once dubbed him “the black Leonardo” because of his multiple talents. “When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way,” he once advised, “you will command the attention of the world.”

  Carver was a man of generous spirit, a committed Christian who urged peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater,” he cautioned. “Keep your thoughts free from hate, and you need have no fear from those who hate you.” He’s buried next to Booker T. Washington on the Tuskegee University campus.

  Brown, Bannister, and Walker: Female Entrepreneurs

  Black entrepreneurship is not the province of one sex. Many women have made significant contributions in this area.

  One of the earliest American examples was Clara Brown, born into slavery in 1800. Set free by her owner in the 1850s, she traveled throughout the West, opening one successful laundry business after another. She settled finally in Colorado and became the first black female businesswoman to cash in on the Gold Rush.

  Have you seen the acclaimed 1989 film Glory, starring Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington? It tells the inspiring story of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry, the first black regiment to fight for the North in the Civil War. Though the movie never mentions her by name, a b
lack woman named Christiana Carteaux Bannister was a major financier of the regiment. An activist for the Underground Railroad, Bannister made her money as the “hair doctress” of Providence, Boston, and Worcester. She started and managed thriving beauty salons in all three New England cities.

  Madam C. J. Walker deserves recognition as the first black woman to become a millionaire entirely from her own efforts, not from an inheritance or from a wealthy husband. She built a thriving business selling a line of hair care products and cosmetic creams. She employed some ten thousand women at a time and served millions with her products and services. (For more on Walker, see the next chapter.)

  Berry Gordy: Record Mogul

  Record producer and songwriter Berry Gordy of Detroit provides us with a still-living example of a black entrepreneur whose work virtually everybody knows and loves, even if they don’t recognize his name. He founded Motown Records in 1959. The artists he signed and promoted are legendary: Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Commodores, the Jackson 5, and many more.

  Gordy started his company in his small Detroit house, which is now a museum. Some years later, the city of Detroit passed an ordinance banning home-based businesses. What could have been a model for many poor but aspiring entrepreneurs in the Motor City—starting a business in your house when you don’t yet have the capital to buy or rent a building—became almost impossible. That sad fact is undoubtedly one of many reasons for Detroit’s long economic decline.

  Remember the Wealth Creators

  While the major media today seem to focus inordinately on blacks who are active in politics, academia, and “community organizing” of various forms, black entrepreneurship is alive and well, creating wealth for millions in America and beyond. Do an Internet search for “black entrepreneurs” and you’ll find an abundance of names in virtually every industry. That speaks to a degree of economic progress that would have seemed unimaginable a century and a half ago.