Black Lives Teach Us To Hope
Monday, February 7, 2022 – Harriet Tubman
Bisa Butler, I Go Prepare a Place for You
For this week, in honor of Black History Month, I’m sharing portraits of iconic and famous Black women whose lives have given me every reason to hope.
Peace & Blessings,
Marcie Alvis-Walker
INVOCATION
She Who Is Wisdom, break open our lives and free us from all chains, real and imagined.
HARRIET TUBMAN: IN HER OWN WORDS – A HISTORY TOLD
I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.
Slavery is the next thing to hell… I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented.
I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me… and I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that's what I've always prayed for ever since.
God’s time [Emancipation] is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free… there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home, after all, was down in Maryland, because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I used cool blues to communicate that Harriet Tubman was a person who had to hide, blend in, and escape detection in order to emancipate herself. The red fabric suggests her forceful personality, determination and will to be free. She was quoted as saying 'There are two things I’ve got a right to, and these are Death, or Liberty – one or the other I mean to have. No one will take me alive; I shall fight for my liberty, and when the time has come for me to go, the Lord will let them kill me.'
The sunflowers in the background have multiple meanings; one is to acknowledge Harriet Tubman’s reliance (and that of many people escaping slavery) on the North Star to help point the way towards freedom. The sun is also a star, and the sunflower symbolizes that guiding light. The sunflower is known as a spiritual and devotional flower because they follow the sun as it moves from East to West in the sky. The sunflowers appear to worship the sun and I use that to indicate Tubman’s devout faith.
BREATH PRAYER FOR STRENGTH
INHALE
Make me strong…
EXHALE
And able to fight.
BENEDICTION
Say Her Name: Araminta Ross, Minty, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Tubman Davis, Moses, Black She Moses, General Tubman, Mother Tubman – for she is worthy.
And you are worthy.
Selah
Simply lovely
I love those blue sunflowers.