National Book Award-winning author Tiya Miles delves into the history and mythology of a remarkable woman in “Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People.” Below is an excerpt from the book.
Harriet Tubman must have understood that delivery is an art form as she repeatedly delivered on her promise to free enslaved people. Navigating woods and byways, she disguised herself variously when she encountered enslavers or henchmen—sometimes as a chicken owner, a reader, an elderly woman with a curved spine, or a servile person resigned to a life in captivity. Each time she convinced an enemy she was who they assumed—a Black person in their proper place—she was acting. Harriet Tubman’s ability to perform and gauge what an audience wanted became essential to her toolkit in the late 1850s and early 1860s. During this period, she not only had to deceive slave catchers but also gain the trust of enslaved people and the financial support of antislavery donors. Tubman honed her skills as an actor and storyteller. Many of the accounts we have of her most eventful moments were told by Tubman to eager listeners who recorded them with varying accuracy. In sharing her stories, Tubman always had multiple agendas: inspiring donations, bolstering the courage of fellow freedom fighters, and conveying her belief that God was guiding her actions. In her later years, from the 1860s through the 1880s, she aimed to raise funds to secure a haven for those in need.
Creative and personal desires also influenced Harriet’s motives. She wanted to be the one to tell her own story and sought recognition for her accomplishments, even as she attributed them to God. She wanted to control the narrative already forming about her life by the end of the 1850s and to be a free agent, both in word and deed.
From “Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People” by Tiya Miles. Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Tiya Miles.