Harriet wasn't the type to accept the status quo. After thinking long and hard about the way things were and the way things should be, Harriet took action. At the age of 29, she began her career as slavery's worst nightmare when she escaped to freedom in the North. Still not satisfied, she went back for her sister and children the next year, and eventually her brothers and mother. Harriet had found her calling, and the fierce "Black Moses" was born.

During her work as a get-away expert, she helped hundreds of people escape from the tyranny of slavery on nearly twenty perilous missions into the South. Her trips became all the more dangerous as her notoriety grew. Slave owners were desperate to capture her, and offered the huge sum of $40,000 for her arrest.

After the war, Harriet's interest in righting wrongs was just as strong, and she continued to work hard to help the causes she cared about, raising money for schools, helping former slaves, and working for the sick and destitute. She established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and Indigent Colored People, where she herself lived in old age until she died in 1913. The cause of freedom will never be the same.

Excerpted from the book Cool Women with permission of publisher, Girl Press.

Learn More About Harriet Tubman
Harreit Tubman Home
http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/
The Harriet Tubman Home preserves the legacy of "The Moses of Her People" in the place where she lived and died in freedom in Auburn, New York.

America's Library About Harriet Tubman
http://www.legacy98.org/timeline.html
Read more about Harriet Tubman's life with stories and pictures on this web site.

Harriet Tubman's Story
http://www.saltdal.vgs.no/prosjekt/slavrute/35.htm
Read a story about Harriet Tubman from when she was working for the Freemen's Bureau.

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