Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Throughout her life, Harriet Tubman demonstrated a deep capacity for love. How did Tubman’s capacity for love motivate her to undertake her journeys on the Underground Railroad and contribute to her success along the way?

• What factors contributed to her deep love of her family, and how did this love end up inspiring several of her journeys?
• How did she develop a love for nature, and how did this help her on her journeys north and south?
• How did her career on the Underground Railroad demonstrate a deep love for other people outside of her family? What role did her religious faith play in this love for other people?

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt asks students to synthesize the book’s key thematic threads—The Bond of Family, Nature as Refuge and Resource, and Religious Faith and Biblical Allegory—and connect them to Tubman’s characterization. If your students are ready for a challenge, you might extend this conversation by introducing the term paradox, and then asking students how love presents a paradox in circumstances like Tubman’s. That is, love can increase both fear and courage in the same situation. What examples of this can they think of from Tubman’s life and from life more generally—from history, other texts they have encountered, or their own lives?