https://www.focusfeatures.com/article/interview_-tina-martin-wyatt_tubmans_greatniece,
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Rarely do we
meet a courageous Christian hero in secular movies today. Christians instead
are often portrayed in a negative light. Harriet is a refreshing
contrast. Featuring Verve Records’ s talented artist, Cynthia Erivo, this
excellent, skillfully written, adroitly directed, powerfully acted, and
beautifully produced Focus Features movie begins as a dramatization of her life
as a slave but then focuses on her run for freedom a hundred miles into
Pennsylvania from the slave state of Maryland. But then she is not satisfied to
live simply as a free woman, but she is led by the Lord to free hundreds[1] of other slaves including
her own relatives. She is portrayed as a devout Christian who is guided by the
Lord through the woods and farmlands by visions of what could happen. Her
followers must wait while she listens as a prophet to the direct leading of her
Lord. One marvelous scene is where a reward-seeking free Black man (Walter,
winsomely played by Henry Hunter Hall) witnesses her trance and, thereby, is
transformed. He sees that God speaks directly to her and asks, could she introduce
him to the Lord? The anti-slavery society in Philadelphia of Blacks and Whites
appears almost idyllic until Harriet challenges them, when faced with the
devastating threat of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, that while cautious they must
not become passive and comfortable in their luxury homes but must never forget
to seek actively to liberate more slaves. Harriet’s sense of community superseded
her own comfort. Nevertheless, despite the danger, she lived into her 90s and
did not lose one person that she conducted North.[2]
The slave owners
are not presented in a positive light, especially as they compare slaves to
pigs. As Gideon Brodess, her slave owner was taught, one might become attached
to a slave (or “pig”), but, when it comes time to remove the piglets and kill
the pig, then understandably one will change one’s attitude.
We may think the
1800s have left us behind but 200 years later some White Americans still treat
some Black Americans as second-class citizens. Thus, this is a timely movie.
Harriet Tubman
is portrayed as someone who is not double-minded. What God wants her to do, she
does. She acts and does not question God’s leading, no matter how difficult it
would appear. When God speaks, she acts without question. They call her “Moses,”
because like Moses she met with God and led her people out of slavery. The Lord
told her, as he told Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in
Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know
their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians”
(Exod 3:7-8 NRSV). Moses brought them out as a nation. Harriet brought them out
one by one and group by group.
Harriet is a worthwhile
movie to see and support especially in times when we still have racial
incidents.
Aida
[1] At
the end the film notes that Harriet Tubman personally escorted out 75 slaves
but as a scout with the union army’s Black Regiment, together they freed 750. Collier’s
Encyclopedia 22 (1987) writes that over ten years she personally escorted
more than 200 runaway slaves to the North. She “never lost any of her charges”
(505).
[2]
One escaping slave reported, “I’s hoping and praying all the time I meets up
with that Harriet Tubman woman. She the colored woman what takes slaves to
Canada. She always travels the underground railroad, they calls it, travels at
night and hides out in the day. She sure sneaks them out the South, and I
thinks she’s the brave woman,” the Slave Narrative Collection of the Federal
Writers’ Project, ed. B. A. Botkin, Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of
Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 198