Following Harriet Tubman’s death on March 10, 1913, there were many efforts made to celebrate her life and legacy through memorials. One such memorial was a tablet dedicated to her and placed in the Cayuga County Courthouse. On June 12, 1914, the city of Auburn and its citizens held a ceremony to honor Tubman and her legacy. It was an interracial affair even though the plaque was commissioned by white organizations. Black people participated in the proceedings as both attendees and as speakers at the unveiling ceremony. The fundraising campaign for the statue lasted until October 1914 because the contributions were slow. Even still, the cause attracted donations from both the Black and white citizens of Auburn, totaling almost $700.[1]Prominent Black leaders such as Booker T. Washington, Mary Talbert, the president of the Empire State Federation of Women’s Clubs (ESFWC), and Reverend Edward Ulysses Anderson Brooks, the superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Home, presented at this event. Tubman’s grandniece, Alice Lucas, also participated in the affair by accepting the memorial tablet.[2] Talbert’s speech was called “Sketch of Life and Work of Harriet Tubman,” where she refers to Tubman as “that great heroine of my race.”[3] Her statement can be viewed as a recovery of Tubman and her legacy for Black women.[4] This is especially significant when one looks at the other speeches of the day, which represent Tubman as an American “heroine and patriot.”[5] For example, the mayor of the city, Charles Brister, argued that Tubman’s legacy “must be ranked with the great characters on history.”[6] This is a significant because he connects her to the “great men” of American history, a category that consisted of the old white men, and possibly attempts to elevate Tubman to this status.[7] The vast majority of memorials created at the time celebrated those who appealed to the “Great Men” archetype. Therefore, Tubman’s memorial was unique considering the landscape of memorials existing at the time, and even today. Charles Aiken, the former mayor of Auburn, acknowledged this as well, stating, “there have been very few monuments erected to slaves and very few to the memory of Negroes and I believe but one to a Negro woman and a slave, but Auburn is erecting this tablet.”[8] This was also interesting because it expresses awareness of an issue that Americans would be reckoning with over a century later.

Memorializing Black Women

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ArcGIS <link>StoryMaps</link> is the professional version of StoryMaps and is available as part of <link2>ArcGIS Online</link2>. Both products share similar storytelling capabilities, so if you are familiar with StoryMaps, you'll feel right at home with ArcGIS StoryMaps. Visit the <link3>retirement page</link3> for a detailed comparison between StoryMaps and ArcGIS StoryMaps.

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