historical study

Kate Larson spent years researching and documenting Harriet Tubman's life to write this book. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak about the book in Cambridge, MD. Mr. Thomas Hall (who reviewed this book below) could have benefited from hearing Mrs. Larson speak. I feel he is not being fair by saying a white person could not write about African American history. At this lecture, which was supported by the Harriet Tubman Society, several of her sources were also in attendance. One gentleman was an African American historian from Dorchester County. I don't doubt for a moment that Mrs. Larson was not as accurate and thorough in her research for this book. It is extremely well written and a fascinating read.

as to "questioning" the popular numbers for trips into the slave South and people led to freedom, Larson relies more on Tubman's *own* reports than on the writers (often WHITE by the way!) who had their own rationales for inflating the numbers in service of books sales and other political goals. Larson does not *reduce* Tubman's heroism (indeed the subtitle explicitly calls Tubman a "hero" ) what she does is highlight the fact that whether 70 or 300 were led to freedom by Harriet Tubman she was a hero.

The book is a celebration of an American life that draws on sources black, white, archival, family and tradition. The acknowledgments and the cover blurbs are thanks to a myriad of African Americans of all types. What those people did recognize and this reader below does not is that Larson used the truth and the historical record to make that heroism more than simply a popular opinion but an incontrovertible fact. We honor the past and its heroes by telling the TRUTH about them. Harriet Tubman didn't need myth then and she doesn't need it now. Her life was one of truth and faith, we owe her memory nothing less.

In her introduction, Larson says "We all believe we know Harriet Tubman" yet this knowledge is limited to the heroic myth of children's books. Yet in order to tell the true story of Harriet Tubman, Larson often doubts Tubman's own testimony and instead calls for evidence from "white sources" to corroborate Tubman's claims. Larson questions, for example, the fact that Tubman herself stated that she was born in 1825 and instead claims that there is no archival evidence to support this.
She then further questions the number of trips and the number of slaves that Tubman claims she freed.

I have always had my doubts of white scholars doing black history, and Larson's book proves me right. Larson doubts what black people stated, believed, and KNEW through both our own oral culture and history, and then comes along to say that she is going to tell us something more than just myth. If questioning numbers and doubting black historical actors is her version of history, we surely have not made it to the Promised Land.