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HT
19th Century
Harriet Tubman
c. 1822–1913 · Underground Railroad
She never lost a passenger.
Tubman escaped bondage in Maryland and returned roughly thirteen times to guide some seventy people north, carrying a pistol and a single rule: nobody turns back. In the war she scouted for the Union army and led a raid up the Combahee that freed hundreds more. She spent her last decades arguing for women's votes, having been paid almost nothing for any of it.
Why it matters for freedom
She acted without permission from any authority, which is the whole theory of liberty in one woman's practice.
Who they stood against
slave catchers, the Fugitive Slave Act, and every marshal paid to drag a person back