Wellsville resident Eddie Murphy appeared as famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman and gave a living history performance to students at Southern Local Jr./Sr. High School on Nov. 18. Murphy has traveled around the country sharing Tubman’s tale of bravery by helping hundreds of slaves escape to freedom and serving as a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War. (Submitted photo)

SALINEVILLE — Southern Local Jr./Sr. High School students witnessed history coming to life as Wellsville resident Eddie Murphy portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman during a special presentation on Nov. 18.

Murphy has travelled locally and around the country depicting the brave former slave who saved herself and hundreds of others by fleeing through the Underground Railroad to the North to find freedom. The Wellsville native lived in California for 37 years before returning to her hometown nearly a decade ago. Murphy said she was inspired by her sister, Gwen, who led a Black History program at her church each February. Murphy researched Tubman and performed there, and she continued to make appearances around the country, from Boston to UCLA and points in between. She has met with organizations and schools and planned to travel to Michigan next month for another program.

She held two presentations at Southern for high school and junior high classes and appeared wearing long skirts, a headscarf and a satchel to the sounds of a slave hymnal, regaling the crowd with Tubman’s life story in first person. Tubman was born Araminta Ross to slaves in Maryland during the 1820s and spent her younger years in bondage, working endless hours and facing harsh treatment from slave masters. After her owner sold her two sisters, Tubman and her other siblings repeatedly faced a similar threat. She began working as a nanny at age 6 and eventually held other jobs such as driving oxen, working in the field and tracking muskrat. At age 13, she was injured when an overseer threw a heavy weight at a slave boy who was attempting to flee. Tubman was struck in the head and sustained trauma, leading to seizures and causing her to hear voices and have visions, but she believed with the latter was a spiritual experience.

“I believe in those hours that God was talking to me. I heard things. I heard crying, I heard screaming and I saw feet running swiftly,” she said.

Tubman was returned to her original owner but soon met her husband, a free man named John Tubman. She changed her name to Harriet in honor of her mother, but the marriage was complicated since John was freed and she was still enslaved. According to the laws at that time, their children would be born in bondage and the union would not be recognized in Maryland. When her owner died and she faced being sold to another, Tubman tried to persuade her brothers to escape.

“One night, I along with my brothers left the plantation and started walking, following the North Star and praying as we went,” Murphy commented, saying they found food and shelter with abolitionist Quakers but her brothers made her turn back after learning there was a bounty on their heads.

However, Tubman had a taste of freedom and tried to persuade her husband to go northward. He refused, saying he was born in Maryland and would die there. Undeterred, Tubman would leave on her own a week later.

“I just kept walking and walking. I’d sleep during the day and walk at night, receiving help from the Quakers,” she added.

Tubman made a life for herself in Philadelphia and gained meaningful employment. She would return South, then learned her husband had wed another. Tubman’s father encouraged her to listen to her calling and she went on to lead more slaves northward. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed which stated that slave masters could retrieve escaped slaves from the North and take them back into bondage, but this only fueled Tubman’s mission to help more people. She risked her life and returned to Maryland, gathering more slaves and taking them all the way to Canada where slavery was illegal. Tubman would make many treks between 1841-1860.

“The greatest event was when I brought my parents out of bondage to freedom,” Murphy commented in character.

The then-Governor of New York offered Tubman land to reside on, but she still had a bounty on her head. In 1860, she left Canada and bravely joined the Union Army as a scout and spy during the Civil War, working as a cook and nurse at a Confederate camp to learn the Southern regiment’s secrets. She was able to help the Union and freed 300 slaves, and after the war she and her parents lived in New York. She then met her second husband, a former slave named William Davies who was 12 years her junior. They started a family and eventually Tubman founded the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged for former slaves.

It was there that she would take a final journey, this time to Heaven.

“One morning I remember so well was March 10, 1913. I did my last escort, but this time I was the escortee. Jesus Christ was the escort and He came and took me to glory. It was the Lord who helped me all the way.”