via Wikimedia
Starting in the mid-1800s, ardent abolitionist and freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman, helped Black people escape through the Underground Railroad, a network of safe spaces on the route to freedom.
But when the Civil War called, she left to offer the Union Army a helping hand. The work she continued to do will leave you even more in awe of her.
Serving in a war that could help free more people at once than a few trips through the Underground Railroad could, Tubman initially worked as a cook and nurse. That soon shifted, however, when she was enlisted as an armed scout and spy!
Dressed as an elderly woman, Tubman would go to Confederate camps and retrieve information from enslaved Black soldiers who were forced to serve a cause that did them no good.
And her work didn’t end there.
After the war, when the health of her parents declined, Tubman took care of them. This experience perhaps inspired her to open a community nursing home for the poor and elderly in 1908 called the Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes.
Harriet Tubman was an icon. A legend! From the Underground Railroad to the Civil War to her home for the elderly, she lived a life of service in the name of Black progress - a gleaming example of the work we also can do to make our communities better for us all.