A Previously Unknown Portrait of a Young Harriet Tubman Goes on View

[Judi Lynn]

“I was stunned,” says director Lonnie Bunch; historic Emily Howland photo album contains dozens of other abolitionists and leaders who took an active role



The Emily Howland photo album containing the portrait of Tubman, (above: detail, ca. 1868) was unveiled this week at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. (NMAAHC, Library of Congress)


By Allison Keyes
smithsonian.com
March 26, 2019

The power exuded by a previously unknown portrait of Harriet Tubman is tangible. The escaped slave, who repeatedly returned to the South risking her life to bring hundreds of enslaved people North to freedom, stares defiantly into the camera. Her eyes are clear, piercing and focused. Her tightly waved hair is pulled back neatly from her face. But it is her expression—full of her strength, power and suffering—that stops viewers in their tracks.

“Suddenly, there was a picture of Harriet Tubman as a young woman, and as soon as I saw it I was stunned,” says a grinning Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He’s talking about a portrait of Tubman contained in an 1860s-era photography album belonging to abolitionist Emily Howland.

“All of us had only seen images of her at the end of her life. She seemed frail. She seemed bent over, and it was hard to reconcile the images of Moses (one of Tubman’s nicknames) leading people to freedom,” Bunch explains. “But then when you see this picture of her, probably in her early 40s, taken about 1868 or 1869 . . . there’s a stylishness about her. And you would have never had me say to somebody ‘Harriet Tubman is stylish.’”

But Bunch, a historian with expertise in the 19th century, then looked a little deeper at the portrait of this woman Americans think they know so well. Not only did she escape slavery and conduct hundreds of others to freedom along the Underground Railroad, she served as a spy, a nurse and a cook for Union Forces during the Civil War. She also helped free more than 700 African-Americans during an 1863 raid in South Carolina, which earned her another nickname: General Tubman. Bunch says the photograph celebrates all of those facets of Tubman’s life.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/previously-unknown-portrait-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-young-woman-goes-view-180971796/#QbTxEJr9kSKm8Akm.99

[CatMor]

1. Wow .... great portrait ...

it would be good to put this portrait on the 20.00 dollar bill.

[3Hotdogs]

8. + 1

[Metatron]

2. Wonderful!

Thanks for posting this, judi

[MLAA]

3. Amazing woman, the portrait evokes her strength and determination.

[jimlup]

4. Wow! That's awesome... her destiny can be seen in her eyes!

A powerful and determined young woman!

[volstork]

5. She seems made of steel.

What a powerful portrait.

[certainot]

6. kick ass

[Judi Lynn]

7. Found a full length version of the same photo:

This Photo of Harriet Tubman Was Lost for Close to a Century

BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN
MARCH 6, 2018

More than a century after Harriet Tubman died in March of 1913, the Library of Congress announced on Tuesday that it has conserved and digitized a previously unrecorded portrait of the “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, the secret network that helped fugitive slaves in the South get to freedom in the North.

Catalogers believe that the photograph was taken between 1867 and 1869, when she lived in Auburn, N.Y., where Tubman — who had herself escaped from bondage in 1849 — took care of fugitive slaves in their old age.

. . .

The fact that she’s seated in a parlor chair sporting a lace collar and elegant bodice reflects a deliberate way she carried herself at the time. As TIME has previously reported, she often donned lace and fine clothes, believing that if she dressed respectably, then people would treat African Americans with respect. She particularly prized a lace shawl that Queen Victoria had given her in 1897.

This new portrait of Tubman was part of an album of 48 rare photographs previously owned by Emily Howland, a Quaker schoolteacher and abolitionist who lived 20 minutes south from Tubman in Sherwood, N.Y. Howland died in 1929.

More:
http://time.com/5186893/harriet-tubman-photo/

[yellowcanine]

9. That portrait should replace the racist Jackson on the $20 bill.

Seriously.

[MH1]

10. + infinity

It's long, long overdue.

[Odoreida]

11. The new 20 should use this one for the engraved portrait. n/t