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Janell Hobson, Kerry Walters. Harriet Tubman: A Life in American History., The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 1286–1287, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae272
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There can never be too many biographies that cover the incomparable life of American hero Harriet Tubman. And yet, for this one extraordinary Black woman, we can almost count them on one hand—if we exclude all the ones designed for children. Recent works by Kate Clifford Larson, Catherine Clinton, Jean M. Humez, Milton C. Sernett, and Kristen T. Oertel have expanded on the earlier biographies of Sarah H. Bradford and Earl Conrad, while adjacent historical projects—from Douglas V. Armstrong’s archaeological work to Edda L. Fields-Black’s book on the Combahee River Raid—have painted a fuller picture of an iconic life. It is within this context that Kerry Walters’s Harriet Tubman: A Life in American History joins the growing field of Harriet Tubman studies.
The subtitle for this latest Tubman biography is apropos, given that Walters narrates American history with a sprinkling of Tubman’s life throughout significant events. Interestingly, he begins the story with chattel slavery, from its economic incentives to its legal practices, and presents Tubman’s resistance as a freedom seeker and Underground Railroad conductor as noble opposition and moral compass. The stories relating to Tubman—from her time in slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, to her rescue missions to life after the Civil War in Auburn, New York—are reiterated here with keen storytelling skill and intrigue. However, there were no new insights, as one would expect when reading a new biography.