Afterword

One hundred years after Harriet Tubman’s death in 1913, President Barack Obama created the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument through Executive Order under the American Antiquities Act. The Monument, located in Dorchester County, Maryland, where Tubman was born into slavery, includes thousands of acres of forests, fields, and waterways that traverse the landscapes of Tubman’s life before the Civil War. The Monument is the near-completion of a decade-and-a-half of grassroots and national effort to establish federal recognition of Tubman’s life and legacy. As a National Park Service unit, the Monument designation brings federal resources to the preservation, interpretation, and promotion of the significance of her life and contributions to the building and sustaining of our nation.

The effort is not complete, however. Those who have been advocating for a full-fledged National Park in Tubman’s honor have been left with a bag half-full. The Monument does not include the historical and cultural sites associated with the last fifty years of her life in Auburn, NY, nor does it include the most significant sites associated with her Underground Railroad activities on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in neighboring Caroline County. These important places were included in the original commitment to honor Tubman’s life by the National Park Service when they completed their long awaited Harriet Tubman Special Resource Study in 2008. So what happened?

Early Preservation and Commemoration

Early efforts to achieve national recognition began with saving and restoring Tubman’s Home for the Aged in Auburn, NY by a group of Tubman relatives, community members, and AME Zion Church officials. Harriet Tubman deeded this twenty-five-acre property to the AME Zion Church in 1903, which retains ownership to this day. Starting in the 1950s, this single effort sparked a decades-long commitment to preserving not only the physical remnants of her life in Auburn, NY, but her historical and cultural memory, too. Once restoration by the Harriet Tubman Booster’s Club was completed, the Church has maintained the property as a public museum. Harriet Tubman’s residence, located on an abutting seven acres but sold out of her estate in 1913, was acquired by the Church in 1990.

The brick residence, built in 1883, replaced Tubman’s early wood-frame house that had been destroyed by fire. Tubman and her husband Nelson Davis, friends, and family members built this house using bricks made on the property. With the involvement of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP), Auburn City Planning Office, and the Preservation League of New York State, the joint properties earned National Register and National Historic Landmark status. Thompson Memorial AME Zion Church, Tubman’s place of worship, and her gravesite at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn received Landmark status as well. For decades, an annual AME Zion pilgrimage to the Tubman home site in Auburn has been hosted by the Harriet Tubman Boosters Club and Friends of the Harriet Tubman Library. Held during the Memorial Day weekend, the pilgrimage attracts hundreds of families and individuals from all around the country.

In Maryland, early efforts to celebrate Tubman included a 1965 Civil War Centennial marker placed at Tubman’s childhood home, the former Brodess Farm outside of Bucktown. Community celebrations commemorating Tubman’s life and legacy began at Bazel Church, a historic black church in Bucktown, and they are still held there in June of every year. The Harriet Tubman Organization of Cambridge was founded in the mid 1980s as a community-centered museum and educational resource center for the region and visitors to the area. The Organization hosts tours and annual community activities and celebrations.

A Proposal for a National Park

In 1995, the National Park Service successfully completed the Underground Railroad Special Resource Study, and with Congressional approval, established the Network to Freedom Program. The successful program now boasts well over 500 documented Underground Railroad sites across the country. The original Study recommended two sites associated with Harriet Tubman as worthy of additional study. Through the encouragement of Vincent DeForest, Special Assistant to the Director of the National...