Slave owners would place newspaper ads about escaped slaves, offering rewards for their capture and return. The runaways’ names and detailed descriptions of their appearance and skills were listed, making detection difficult. And hundreds of people saw these ads.
Newspapers were actively complicit in and benefited from the slave economy. Not only were they extremely profitable, but many newspapers acted as brokers in the slave market by advertising the buying and selling of human beings.
Some ads tried to persuade runaways to return voluntarily to their owners. If they were captured first, they’d be sent to jail or sold away from their families. These were just a few of the real dangers of running away. Slave owners' weaponization of newspapers to identify and recapture enslaved people gave Harriet Tubman an idea.
Southern newspapers didn’t have a Sunday edition.This pause in the news cycle gave Harriet Tubman an opening. Saturday became Harriet Tubman’s go-to day to help people escape because by the time an ad ran, Tubman would be long gone.
Tubman scheduled her missions on the one day of the week that people didn’t get the paper. How can we also strategize around oppressive systems to achieve our liberation?