MANSFIELD — Every great dream begins with a dreamer. One of those dreamers was Harriet Tubman.
The Mansfield/Richland County Public Library hosted Harriet Tubman: Straight Up Outta’ the Underground as part of its Black History celebration on Saturday afternoon.
Presented by the Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati, the one-woman production transformed history into a live experience.
Guests didn’t just hear about the Underground Railroad — they walked it with her.
Through powerful storytelling and audience participation, the re-enactor transported families across generations — from a grandmother stolen from Africa to a woman who would liberate hundreds.
Trials shaping a young Tubman
“As you can see it ain’t underground and it ain’t no railroad,” Tubman’s re-enactor said. “What it is is a secret — Blacks and Whites alike all risking their lives to help slaves escape to free states.”
For more than 300 years, the transatlantic slave trade tore over 12 million people from their African homeland — the only place they had ever known. Among them was Tubman’s grandmother.
“That’s all I know, except she was a slave who gave birth to slaves and one of those slaves gave birth to me,” Tubman’s re-enactor said.
Before she became the railroad’s most recognized conductor, Tubman was just a child working in homes and fields.
At 6 years old, she worked as a nursemaid. Later, overseers sent her into the fields to check muskrat traps, where she stood for hours in mud until she contracted measles. She recovered — and returned to the fields.
“Out in the fields is where I heard new ideas,” she said. “I heard slaves wanted to be free.”
At 13, Tubman saw those ideas become visual when a runaway was caught by an overseer. When the overseer caught up he hurled a heavy weight at the man, Tubman stepped in the way. The weight collided with her head and knocked her out.
For two days she lay unconscious – inside the house.
“When I woke up I realized I would never be the same,” the re-enactor said. “I would fall into these deep sleeping spells.”
In those spells came vivid dreams and visions — moments she believed were messages from God. In one vision, she saw Mr. Brodess, the man who enslaved her, intended to sell her and her brothers.
“After being sold, I changed my prayer,” the re-enactor said. “If you ain’t going to change his heart, take him out the way.”
That night, Brodess died. His widow, Eliza, struggled financially and began selling her enslaved people. Tubman soon learned Eliza planned to sell her within days.
“To me, I didn’t have no other choice,” she said.
Running towards freedom: Tubman’s escape
There was no time for a safe farewell. Instead, she went to the edge of the field where her family could hear her voice and called out her goodbye.
“Then I broke out running and I kept running because I knew what would happen if I got caught.”
Instructed to look for a house with a quilt hanging in the window and a lantern on the post, a Quaker woman named Elizabeth answered the door — her husband was a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
“That Quaker woman took good care of me,” Tubman said. “She gave me food, a place to stay and even washed my feet.”
That evening, the family hid Tubman in their carriage and carried her across the Pennsylvania border.
“In Pennsylvania, I was free,” she said. “There was glory over everything.”
Freedom, however, was not comfort.
“But there was no one to welcome me into freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.”
Her only means of travel had been by foot, horse and sometimes river.
“All I had was the voice of God, determination and angels to lead the way,” she said.
From underground railroad to Civil War hero
In Philadelphia, William Still, chairman of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, helped her find work and begin life as a free woman.
Yet loneliness followed her. She longed for her family and friends.
“Then, I saw one of the most glorious visions I ever did see,” the re-enactor said. “I saw myself leading my people to freedom.”
When Tubman learned that slave owners were planning to sell her niece and her niece’s two children, she devised a plan to get them onto a boat to Baltimore.
This was the beginning of her returning to the south — more than 19 times — guiding more than 300 enslaved people to freedom.
Known as “Moses,” she described the Underground Railroad as an underground city: tracks were the routes, stations were safe houses where they found rest.
Tubman’s courage did not end there. During the Civil War, she was a spy. She became the first woman to lead a military expedition — the Combahee River Raid — which freed more than 700 enslaved people.
After the war, she continued her fight alongside the women’s suffrage movement, demanding equal rights.
“My work was to demand equal rights for all people,” the re-enactor said. “God ain’t never meant for a man to own another man.”
(More photos from the Harriet Tubman: Straight Up Outta’ the Underground reenactment. Credit: Hannah Martin)
