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Of "Sound" and "Unsound" Body and Mind: Reconfiguring the Heroic Portrait of Harriet Tubman

Janell Hobson

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Volume 40, Number 2, 2019, pp. 193-218 (Article)

Published by University of Nebraska Press

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/730157

Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind Reconfi guring the Heroic Portrait of Harriet Tubman

Janell Hobson

Harriet Tubman (ca. 1822– 1913) is central to narratives of US progressive history and specifi cally black women’s history. For this reason, she can easily be invoked in a historic acceptance speech by Viola Davis, who became the fi rst black woman to win a Leading Actress Emmy in 2015 at a time when she had planned to produce and star in a Tubman biopic. Tubman has also inspired the establishment of a national park, as with the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument, and won the popular vote in a 2015 campaign to place a historic woman on the US currency. She is even contemporized for modern audiences, whether that involves denigrating her in a vulgar spoof called the Harriet Tubman Sex Tape, which briefl y appeared on and then was subsequently removed from Russell Simmons’s All- Def Digital YouTube channel due to its controversy, or celebrating her in a satirized Drunk History episode on Comedy Central, as portrayed by Octavia Spencer. She also appeared in the popular television series Underground, portrayed by Aisha Hinds, who delivered an unforgettable monologue in her iconic role. Functioning as perhaps the most iconic black woman in American culture, Tubman’s image, words, and story continue to inspire and provoke.

Despite her hypervisibility as a historic icon, Tubman, who is renowned for her status as an Underground Railroad conductor, Civil War hero, and woman’s suff ragist, remains invisible as a person with a disability. Th at is, her disability as an identity marker is downplayed. I raise this issue for a few reasons. First, Harriet Tubman has been heralded as an extraordinary individual with incredible strength resulting in self- liberation and the liberation of approximately seventy slaves from the antebellum South on the Underground Railroad, and yet her “superwoman” abilities remain a mystery for many— mostly because these abilities remove her from the realm of the ordinary and the everyday. Second, this image of strong black womanhood clings to a woman who historically suff ered from a disability

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throughout her life, thus complicating the “strength” she embodied. Finally, Tubman was perceived as “illiterate,” a woman who could not read nor write and therefore lacked the literary agency to make her own story legible in the annals of history. Th is last point shift s the critique of Tubman’s disability from the physical to the cognitive, in which her ingenuity, navigational skills, and survival techniques are rendered mystically, even magically, as if they could not be based in intellectual genius.

Steeped in romanticism and mysticism— guided as she was by her “super- natural” visions in her journey along the Underground Railroad— Tubman also functions as more mythical than historical in the popular imaginary. She becomes what Vivian May describes as an “icon of strength,” someone who “seems ahistorical, selfl ess, and without equal, not someone who worked within long- established networks of communication and resistance.”1 Such a mythic lens further restricts and confi nes notions of heroism. Tubman’s his- tory is much like that of other legendary historical fi gures, who represent what Nell Painter calls “invented greats.”2 Utilizing the example of Sojourner Truth (1797– 1883), another black woman icon, Painter argues that such “invented greats” are “consumed as a signifi er and beloved for what we need [them to be].”3

If greatness is based on what we need our icons to be, then perhaps it is time to redefi ne what it means to be “great.” In other words, a non- ableist rendering of the “great woman” must reconstitute Tubman in a way that foregrounds what we might consider to be her “vulnerable strength” in the historical narrative. By complicating her strength through the lens of vulnerability, I in no way wish to diminish her abilities or to engender an ableist critique of the strength she embodied. Instead, I wish to call attention to the ways that we have discursively distinguished between weakness and strength, in which the superwoman is always capable, while her opposite— the disabled woman— is oft en assumed to be incapable.

Th is is a supposition that writer Carolyn Tyjewski challenges when re- minding us that “if one looks at the historical fi gures that are most oft en called forth as the quintessential ‘Strong Black Woman,’ most are Disabled Black Women. . . . Harriet Tubman had severe epilepsy. Sojourner Truth had a disfi gured arm.”4 Tyjewski explicitly names iconic black women from the past who blurred the boundaries between “strength” and its constructed con- trast: “disability.” She does so specifi cally to suggest that such women disrupt these dichotomous constructions since they are precariously placed to re- sist through “strength” the larger oppressive forces that have rendered them vulnerable.

In many ways, the strong black woman parallels the “supercrip.” Writer Eli

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 195

Clare suggests that supercrip narratives “focus on disabled people ‘overcom- ing’ [their] disabilities. Th ey turn individual disabled people, who are sim- ply leading their lives, into symbols of inspiration.”5 However, as Sami Schalk challenges, such narratives need further nuance and complication since they need not be “regarded as mostly regressive” in views of the disabled fi gure.6 Much as Tyjewski contests the view of the strong black woman as necessarily pejorative— a view stemming from analyses by such black feminists as Michele Wallace, who cautioned against the “myth of the superwoman” that hides “an inexorable process of black female disenfranchisement, exploitation, oppres- sion, and despair”7— Schalk similarly contends that supercrip narratives oper- ate within narrative frameworks that off er positive attributes beyond the re- ductive stereotype of “over- achieving” disability. When we view Tubman as a historical fi gure who intersects the twin concepts of the supercrip and the superwoman, we have an opportunity to complicate her “invented greatness,” not by viewing her history as solely “overcoming” her socially constructed race, gender, and disability but by situating her within a theoretical frame- work that challenges the restrictive meanings of her body based in these op- pressive systems.

Subsequently, I seek in this essay seeks to interrogate the function of “great women” narratives and how we might reconstitute Tubman beyond the heroic and iconic toward a more embodied realization of her historical subjectiv- ity. Rather than reduce her to superwoman status— or elevate her, as the case may be— we may fi nd it useful to examine how cultural memory might shape identity politics around race, gender, class, and disability. Disability specifi - cally was crucial to the system of chattel slavery that Tubman escaped, even if we don’t oft en recognize it as a category of analysis. Referring to a slave’s “soundness” of body, historian Dea Boster argues the following:

Although it is diffi cult, if not impossible, to estimate a percentage of slaves who were considered disabled or “unsound,” it is clear that dis- abling conditions were common among bondspeople in the antebel- lum South. Meager subsistence, unsafe work conditions, repetitive stress injuries, corporeal punishment, and abuse— physical, sexual, or emotional— could cause physical and mental conditions among African American bondspeople that rendered slaves unsound in the eyes of the slaveholding class.8

Recasting Tubman primarily through her disability— resulting from a se- vere head injury sustained during her adolescence that impacted her ninety- one years of life— can off er us glimpses into the external forces that contrib- uted to the “disabling” of her body and the collective body of other African

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Americans, enslaved or free, disabled or able- bodied. In being made vulner- able in raced, classed, gendered, and able- bodied systems of oppression that simultaneously required the “strength” of the black body politic to engineer the plantation economy, Tubman’s historic status can illuminate a diff erent portraiture of an ex- bondwoman incapacitated by a slave system but still sub- versive in redefi ning her disability through self- reclamation as well as through her commitment to social justice with emphases on communal care, respect, and devotion to the disabled members in society.

Tubman’s lifelong advocacy for the disabled community presents us with a historical model for black feminist praxis and an analytical approach to in- tersecting African American history with feminist disability studies. For the remainder of this essay, I examine Tubman’s disabled body and the ways it can extend academic discourses on corporeality. I further examine both ac- ademic and popular representations of Tubman, which oft en foreclose on her contributions to black women’s intellectual histories, while more recent narratives— namely, WGN’s Underground cable television series— have nu- anced this iconography. Finally, I analyze photographic portraits produced during Tubman’s lifetime, as well as the social- media discourse found on the Internet, which emerged in the wake of the US Treasury Department’s an- nouncement on April 20, 2016, of Tubman’s future appearance on the twenty- dollar paper currency. Th ese conversations off er insights into the craft ing of national memory and historical reclamation, specifi cally concerning the poli- tics of inclusivity around race, gender, and disability. As David Blight reminds us, “Defl ections and evasions, careful remembering and necessary forgetting, and embittered and irreconcilable versions of experience are all the stuff of historical memory.”9

Th e national discourses surrounding the memory of Tubman at times chal- lenge and at other times reinforce limited representations of disabled black womanhood. Invariably, they re- inscribe what Ellen Samuels calls “fantasies of identifi cation,”10 oft en based in cultural, political, and social assumptions and authoritative corroborations that defi ne our raced, gendered, and dis- abled bodies. In examining these dynamics, I contend that such narratives compel the need for a black feminist praxis that redefi nes concepts of great- ness and heroism, as embodied by an iconic disabled black woman.

Harriet Tubman’s Disabled Body

Harriet Tubman (née Araminta Ross, nicknamed Minty in her youth and “Black Moses” as an adult) is renowned for her liberatory role as a conductor on the Underground Railroad— a secretive passageway that shuttled countless

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 197

fugitives from the slave South to the free North, including Canada, during the antebellum period when slave laws curtailed, and quite literally “disabled,” 11 the free movement of bondspeople and when a thriving agricultural economy, based in cotton and other crops, relied heavily on unpaid and enslaved labor. For her part in this history, Tubman escaped from slavery in the late fall of 1849 when she was twenty- seven years old, leaving behind her husband John Tubman and her extended family upon the threat of being sold away in the wake of her enslaver Edward Brodess’s death. Described as “chestnut- colored” and “fi ne- looking” in a runaway advertisement documenting her fi rst attempt at escape with two of her brothers, Brodess’s widow Eliza, Tubman’s new en- slaver, valued her with a capture price of one hundred dollars.12 Folklore has imagined her price increasing in value alongside her notoriety, as legendary tales describe a bounty on her head once reaching the value of twenty thou- sand dollars aft er she had freed several slaves from diff erent plantations.

Th is fabricated “value” for Tubman’s capture imagines her ability to tran- scend systems of oppression, although Tubman herself recognized that as she was a disabled bondwoman, potential buyers “wouldn’t give a sixpence for me” on the slave market.13 Speaking in the language of commerce, Tubman refl ects an understanding of a system predicated on what Daina Ramey Berry describes as the “exchangeable commodity” of enslaved peoples, whose “fi - nancial value [as] human chattel touched every facet of their lives.”14 Tubman may not have been valued aft er her injury in her youth, but she sought to re- defi ne herself beyond this capitalistic value system that rendered her worth- less. Indeed, she defi ed the system by depriving it of the very labor on which it depended and, through her imagined criminalization, forced the issue of her economic and societal “value.”

In his cataloguing of the commemoration projects of Tubman, biogra- pher Milton Sernett has identifi ed key representations of the icon: a liberating “Moses,” a “General Tubman” soldier, a prophetic “Saint and Seer,” and a ma- ternal “Aunt,” the latter bearing some resemblance to the mammy but more closely fi tting the stereotype of the black matriarch.15 All these roles empha- size her able- bodied and able- minded feats; however, the story of Tubman’s head injury and subsequent disability still undergirds the myths surround- ing her heroism— myths in which Tubman herself was invested. When she was hired out to “de wust man in de neighborhood” as a young adolescent, she received a blow to the head when an overseer had chased a fugitive and threw a two- pound weight at the person in a neighborhood store, striking Tubman instead. Tubman almost died from this wound, but she was forced to labor back in the fi elds, “with the blood and sweat rolling down my face till I

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couldn’t see.”16 Tubman eventually collapsed and was returned to her enslaver, while her mother, Harriet Greene, nursed her back to health.

Interestingly, Tubman’s enslaver tried to sell her but failed to interest buy- ers in his now disabled slave, thus reiterating what Boster notes about the “unsoundness” that devalued certain bodies in slavery. While the chattel in- stitution held a premium on able- bodiedness, slavery routinely incapacitated bondspeople through acts of cruelty that maimed them or through impover- ished conditions that exposed them to illness and inadequate care. Tubman was oft en subjected to physical abuse, and her owner shift ed her work to lum- ber when she could no longer labor in the fi elds. She subsequently developed physical strength from sawing logs under the tutelage of her father, Benjamin Ross.

Aside from this “strength” that Tubman developed while laboring in lum- ber, she further complicated her disability through the lens of divinity and prophecy. She would oft en hear rushing waters and dream powerful visions during her “sleeping spells.” While the physical symptoms of narcolepsy re- sembled the sudden and unexpected incursion of sleep, which may cause puz- zlement to the observer, the better known occurrence of epileptic “fi ts” that caused the body to shake violently induced more of what Boster describes as fears of “uncontrollable African American bodies,” especially when enslavers and physicians grew suspicious over “the possibility of being duped by slaves feigning fi ts.”17

Tubman’s epilepsy did not exhibit such a spectacle of uncontrollability but nonetheless suggested a disabled body that was controlled less by natural forces and more by a higher power. Th rough her proclamations of prophetic dreams and visions— derived from her sleeping spells— Tubman enhanced her disability as a source of empowerment, thus articulating a theology of liberation based in the radical Christian philosophy of spiritual freedom and self- possession that emerged from the religious awakening of the 1830s. Perhaps she followed the lead of other black women religious fi gures of her era— including Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Rebecca Cox Jackson, and Sojourner Truth. Lee and Elaw specifi cally preached to enslaved communities along the Eastern Shore, and as her biographer Kate Cliff ord Larson argues, it is quite possible that Tubman heard their sermons and, thereby, was duly inspired by their example of female spiritual leadership.18 Subsequently Tubman inter- twines Christian liberation theology and black feminist thought to reconsti- tute her own disabled body through the divine.

Tubman, like Rebecca Cox Jackson, experienced “out of body” sensations in her visions. Th at Tubman never lost her way and, as she once boasted, “never lost a passenger” on the Underground Railroad, testifi es to her power

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 199

of divination. Tubman, as recorded by Bradford— to whom she dictated her story— participated in the craft ing of her own disembodiment. For example, she impressed upon Bradford that her ability to escape from slavery derived from her literal transcendence from the body. As Bradford describes: “She de- clares that before her escape from slavery, she used to dream of fl ying over fi elds and towns, and rivers and mountains, looking down upon them ‘like a bird.’ . . . Th ere is nothing strange about this, perhaps, but she declares that when she came North she remembered these very places as those she had seen in her dreams.”19 In presenting herself in fl ight, literally “like a bird,” Tubman subverted her disabled, raced, and gendered condition by literally elevating her body via her oral narrative. However, Tubman tells Bradford that when she didn’t “hab the strength” and loses this superpower ability of fl ight, “‘jes as I was sinkin’ down, dare would be ladies all drest in white ober dere, and dey would put out dere arms and pull me ’cross.”20

Th ere is a certain irony here, for though Tubman narrates her story of es- cape from slavery beyond her body, Bradford’s retelling of her story through the supernatural and black vernacular speech is designed to contain that very body through rhetorics of blackness and “quaint” superstitions, not least of which is the salvation of white ladies in white dresses quite literally dragging Tubman’s body across the slave state/free state border. What we witness in these competing narratives of Tubman’s oral storytelling and Bradford’s writ- ten biography is the tension between Tubman’s reframing of her disability as power— represented by the visions she experienced from her sleeping spells— and Bradford’s paternalistic appreciation for Tubman’s “vividness of imagina- tion seldom equaled in the soarings of the most cultivated minds.”21 As Sernett observes in these early biographies of Tubman, her spiritual testimony invited guarded Christian empathy from Bradford, while her posthumous biographer Earl Conrad outright rejected her supernatural spin, instead fi nding solace in a medical and secular explanation for her visions, which he believed were the result of her head injury.22

Tubman’s disability fi ts within the parameters of what Schalk calls the “su- perpowered supercrip . . . who gains powers aft er a . . . disabling accident.”23 Whether her biographers are comfortable in according her that status, what is instructive here is Tubman’s own attempts at self- defi nition that reclaims her body and her mind for herself and for a liberated community. In re- envisioning her epileptic episodes through the divine, Tubman also imagines a revolutionary future— whether in dreaming of the landscape she would need to cross to freedom or in dreaming of her people’s eventual freedom before ar- riving at the Combahee River.24 As Alexis Pauline Gumbs suggests, “Tubman’s strange, transformative relationship to dreaming . . . could even usefully dis-

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place the centrality of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington moment in the discursive relationship between freedom and dreaming.”25 Tubman thus aligns with a social justice model that is predicated on what Katie Geneva Cannon calls the “reimaging” of the salvifi c,26 in which our heroine constantly reimaged her disabled black body for liberation. Th is is manifest when she envisioned herself “in glory,” as she once described upon seeing her hands for the fi rst time when she “crossed dat line to freedom.”27 She would later expand that vision to encompass a wider community of disabled black bodies, which she nurtured throughout her years aft er emancipation until her death in 1913.

Tubman’s community- building eff orts post- emancipation culminated in a fundraising project to build a home for the sick and elderly in Auburn, New York. Tensions exist between Tubman’s self- presentation of able- mindedness and able- bodiedness and her own struggles with disability, which framed the stories she chose to tell through her dictated biographies, penned by Brad- ford, and in interviews and on lecture circuits. Such stories emphasized her undefeatable courage, and when she specifi cally addressed her disability— from the constant headaches that she endured to the narcoleptic seizures that manifested on occasion— Tubman carefully craft ed her experiences to down- play any signs of weakness and frailty, thus recalling what Darlene Clark Hine describes as black women’s “culture of dissemblance,” which “created the ap- pearance of openness and disclosure but actually shielded their inner lives and selves from their oppressors.”28

Because Tubman relied on the benevolence of her allies to support her growing household of relatives and ex- slaves and needed to alleviate her im- poverished conditions, her expertise in storytelling became a major source for her fundraising eff orts, both to support her daily livelihood— which included a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors with her second husband Nelson Davis in the post- emancipation era— and to contribute to the development of her home for people with disabilities. Performing under the dominant gaze and sensitive to her legacy— which had already been undermined when the US government refused her a veteran’s pension for her service during the Civil War— she strategically employed the conventions of heroism to contribute to her own construction of “greatness.” Fully aware of the restrictive systems that routinely devalued her because of her race, gender, class, and disability sta- tus, Tubman helped to launch the stories that would contribute to her iconic status today. Whether at the founding convention of the National Associa- tion of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 (where she triumphantly recounted her Civil War tales as “Mother Tubman” to her black female audience)29 or at the woman suff rage meeting in Rochester months later (where she was led on stage by Susan B. Anthony and voiced the soon- to- be famous words, “I never

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 201

ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger”),30 Tubman shared the stories that would cement her legacy as an emancipator. Regardless of the “disabling” conditions of womanhood and restrictions on black life during her era, Tubman constantly proved the full citizenship of women and African Americans through her oral testimony.

Harriet Tubman’s disabled body lends itself to subversive readings, not just in the way she created a self- contained heroic portrait but also in the ways that we are invited to reconfi gure it for our own contemporary era. We are especially invited to imagine Tubman in her fully human and sentient body, given her overwhelming experiences with pain. One story recounts her agony when she underwent surgery in Boston at an advanced age in the late 1890s, due to increased headaches she could no longer withstand. As told to Brad- ford’s brother, pastor Samuel Hopkins, who received a visit from her at his Boston home, Tubman described how “my head was giving me a powerful sight of trouble lately, with achin’ and buzzin’ so I couldn’t sleep at night.”31

How might we sympathize with Tubman having sleepless nights and being so pained that she was willing to have surgery without anesthesia while she “mumbled prayers through teeth clenched on the bullet” (much like Civil War soldiers when they underwent medical amputations)?32 What would it mean to rescue Tubman from her iconic status and situate her within her embodied experience of relentless pain and illness? As Margaret Price specifi cally posits, how can a feminist disability analysis elucidate the desire and pain of the dis- abled body that must be “witnessed and cared for”?33

Th is becomes an arduous struggle in recognizing Tubman as a vulnerable fi gure and not just a strong black woman. Moreover, her work toward the healing and caring for those who were ill or disabled does much to challenge the more popular stories of Tubman’s gun- toting leadership on the Underground Railroad, in which she threatened fugitive slaves with her pistol whenever they showed signs of weakness. Popular tales oft en tout her military leadership at the Combahee River in South Carolina, a raid that liberated 750 bondspeople during the Civil War. Less touted is her role as a healer when she was stationed there precisely because, as Bradford notes, she “nursed our soldiers in the hospitals, and knew how, when they were dying by numbers of some malignant disease, with cunning skill to extract from roots and herbs, which grew near the source of the disease, the healing draught, which allayed the fever and restored numbers to health.”34

Th is healing work continued in freedom and motivated Tubman to promote her heroic tales through biographies and lecture circuits that simultaneously raised funds for her project to establish a home for people with disabilities as well as an infi rmary that she would name in memory of her abolitionist

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and militant comrade John Brown.35 Her vision for the Harriet Tubman Home eventually materialized before her death, which allowed her to extend the care she provided for family members to various ex- slaves, the same vulnerable community that was callously discarded during slavery. Unfortunately, Tubman would eventually fall victim to her ageist and ableist society, which she had resisted through her radical ethic of communal care. As such, the home fell under management by the local African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and an admission fee was later added, much to Tubman’s chagrin.36 She believed that the home should be free and accessible for the aged and other people with disabilities.

However, by the time Tubman became sick and poverty- stricken in her old age, funds had to be raised so that she could pay the admittance fee to her own home!37 Th at such a fate greeted the great Harriet Tubman should serve as a cautionary tale across time, as the struggle continues for adequate healthcare and an ethic for community care and building, a struggle that chafes against profi t- driven goals. It also reiterates what Eva Feder Kittay calls “our mutual and inevitable dependency and our inextricable interdependency” on one an- other, which requires our collective “independence from certain oppressive conditions.”38

Tubman’s death on March 10, 1913, met with great commemorations across the nation, indeed across the world, and she was buried with full military honors for her brave service as a Union Army nurse, soldier, and spy— even though that same military had denied her a pension throughout much of her life.39 Th at such a pension would have alleviated much of the struggle she faced against poverty reminds us of the continued devaluation of African Americans, women, and people with disabilities. When commemorating Tubman’s life history, it is easy to focus only on the stories of her great courage and triumphs, but her stories of vulnerability reveal so much more— not of her failings but of the failings of a society that perpetuates systemic oppressions upholding racism, sexism, classism, and ableism.

An Icon for Black Feminist Disability Studies

Given Tubman’s own experiences with disability and her advocacy on behalf of the disabled community, her iconicity serves the interest of black feminist disability studies. Tyjewski rightly notes how such historical fi gures compli- cate the binary of the strong black woman/disabled black woman, a view- point shared by Christopher Bell, who off ers the example of Tubman in his introduction to the edited volume Blackness and Disability, to posit that the work of “reading black and disabled bodies is not only recovery work . . . but

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 203

work that requires a willingness to deconstruct the systems that would keep these bodies in separate spheres.”40 Nonetheless, this binary needs further interrogation, as disability does not necessarily disappear from the histor- ical narrative— hence requiring recovery work— so much as it is constituted within the construction of strong black womanhood. Th e strong black woman icon is deeply engrained in an ideology of disability.

As Wallace reminds us, Tubman “was the living antithesis of everything women were supposed to be.”41 On the one hand, strength in a woman con- strues deviance and abnormality, especially in the context of the antebellum, Victorian era when Tubman lived, which accepted as normative the weakness and fragility of womanhood. On the other hand, within the slave system, en- slaved women’s bodies were routinely valued for their physical and reproduc- tive labor, oft en viewed since the early slave trade years as having a “naturally” possessed ability for manual work and “fecundity.”42

Such “strength” precluded black women from entering the “cult of true womanhood” with its emphasis on ladylike qualities of submissiveness and dependency. Th ese gendered distinctions demonstrate how race serves as what Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham calls a “metalanguage,” which has a “pow- erful, all- encompassing eff ect on the construction and representation of other social and power relations.”43 Nonetheless, Tubman’s body contradicts ideas of race, gender, and her own iconicity. Unlike the six- foot- tall Sojourner Truth— a contemporary of Tubman’s and another icon of the strong black woman— Tubman was a petite woman who stood fi ve feet tall.

And yet, this petite woman is not what comes to mind when envisioning the strong black woman revolutionary and gun- toting leader. Neither does her disability lend itself to spectacle, as her corporeality is rarely analyzed compared to historical fi gures like Sara Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus” on “freak show” display for the size of her behind from 1810 to 1815 in London and Paris, or Joice Heth, an elderly black woman who was the fi rst of P. T. Barnum’s “freaks” that he advertised in a hoax as George Washington’s 161- year- old nurse maid in 1835. Both these women of African descent framed the intersectional arguments put forth in Rosemarie Garland- Th omson’s seminal essay, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Th eory,” which called for the inclusion and recognition of disability as a socially constructed category of analysis that would “strengthen our understanding of how  .  .  . multiple systems intertwine, redefi ne, and mutually constitute one another.”44 Its publication helped to launch a recognizable subfi eld in feminist theory— feminist disability studies. As such, this fi eld of inquiry explores “conceptual and lived connections between gender and disability .  .  . to make visible the historical and ongoing interrelationship between all forms of oppression.”45

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While feminist disability studies in general sought to complicate feminist theory in ways that push beyond an “add disability and stir” model, Garland- Th omson frames the conversation with a focus on “freakery,” as embodied by Baartman and Heth, that “invoked disability by presenting as deformities or abnormalities the characteristics that marked [these women] as raced and gendered.”46 However, such an emphasis on freakish fi gures encouraged such critical race feminist scholars as Nirmala Erevelles to move away “from mere discursive intervention to deep interrogation of the material constraints” impacting people with disabilities.47 Such “material constraints” inform Tubman’s own disabled body.

Violence under slavery led to Tubman’s disabled condition; however, the ideologies underpinning this system constructed the raced and gendered spectacles of the bodies of Baartman and Heth. Nonetheless, Tubman’s inge- nuity on the Underground Railroad occurred simultaneously with the publi- cation of Types of Mankind,48 which proclaimed the racial inferiority of black people and included the work of natural scientist Louis Agassiz— a student of George Cuvier, the infamous anatomist who dissected the brain and genitalia of Sara Baartman aft er he had acquired her cadaver and compared them to those of apes. Tubman’s actions disproved this scientifi c racism, and consid- ering the minimal degrees of separation, it may be useful to situate her his- tory of disability alongside Baartman’s history to interrogate the dual forces of chattel slavery and colonialism in perpetuating racist, sexist, and ableist rhetorics.

While women like Baartman and Heth are oft en reduced to their bodies, and therefore constructed as freaks or disabled, Tubman oft en seems to transcend the limits of the body in popular representations, as comically rendered in her superwoman feats in Key and Peele’s comedy sketch on the Underground Railroad on Comedy Central— in which she performs incredible acrobatic skills that exhaust her band of fugitives, who fail to keep up with her. In the construction of her greatness, Tubman’s disabled body is erased in attempts to craft her as a heroic subject. Irony is at play here when we contrast this heroic construction with the primary representation of black bodies from the past and even today.

For instance, during the antebellum period when Tubman lived and completed the bulk of her emancipatory work as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, ideas concerning the racial inferiority of black people, as Types of Mankind championed, were inextricably bound to an ideology of disability. As Boster notes, “Many antebellum ideas about African American able- bodiedness were intertwined with concepts of racial inferiority and the natural ‘defectiveness’ that accompanied darker skin.”49 Much like the

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 205

Aristotelian view of the female body as a “mutilated male,” or the perspective during the medieval period when Europeans viewed Africans as “diseased,” with black skin interpreted as a sign of “leprosy,”50 the black female body forms the nexus between these raced and gendered diff erences and, subsequently, becomes synonymous with the disabled body.

Such disabled black bodies are complicated further when situated in the construct of “bodymind,” in which, as Price argues, “mental and physical processes not only aff ect each other but also give rise to each other.”51 Given the ways that black bodies are devalued for presumptions of racial inferior- ity, which connects not just to skin color but also to “attributions of mental incompetence,”52 both Tubman’s embodied experiences and her intellectual work represent sites of resistance. However, just as her body invites little com- mentary and theoretical consideration, so too is the possibility of her genius oft en dismissed, given the superfi cial ways that she is mentioned in various intellectual histories.

A salient example of this is the way Tubman is oft en misquoted, as Martha Jones reminds us in a critique of presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who once falsely attributed words to Tubman in her 2008 Democratic National Convention speech: “Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.”53 Th is had the eff ect of reducing Tubman to a “symbol of ‘feminist’ ideas and giving women the right to vote.”54 Even though Clinton’s goal, in her invocation of Tubman, was mostly to encourage interracial unity among women aft er a contentious primary season that pitted her against the eventual fi rst black president Barack Obama— and subsequently re- created a divide between white women and people of color (including women of color) in their allegiances to a black male versus white female presidential “fi rst”— Jones posits Clinton’s appropriation of Tubman as a racial violation in which “Tubman looked less and less like the intersectional fi gure that black women had promoted.” And yet Jones fails to elaborate on just how Tubman functions as “an intersectional fi gure” for black women, given that Tubman is oft en name- checked without further analysis in black women’s academic works. We need only look to the same volume featuring Jones’s critique, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, in which Tubman is briefl y mentioned in the introduction and only because she is coupled with Sojourner Truth as an example of black women’s historical resistance.55 Considering that Tubman and Truth are interchangeable and sometimes mistaken for each other, such invocations simultaneously highlight both her hypervisibility and invisibility.

Much like Tubman, Truth did not read nor write, even though her literary power manifests in the form of speech acts. However, Truth has benefi tted from a historical “makeover” when Nell Painter recast her beyond what Mark

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Reinhardt calls the “ventriloquism” of white abolitionists, who oft en pre- sented black speech in black folksy forms.56 Th is is most notoriously demon- strated in Painter’s critique of Frances Dana Gage’s rewriting of Truth’s “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” speech, which is contrasted with an earlier rendition closer to the time of Truth’s delivery in 1851.57

Apart from arguing that non- literary fi gures like Truth and Tubman challenged the perception that “an inability to read and write seemed the same as ignorance,”58 Painter repositioned Truth for black women’s intellectual history, which further complicates the ways that Truth’s speech had already been commodifi ed and interpreted for feminist theory and intellectual thought. However, while Painter cautions historians and other scholars to redefi ne the logics of literacy that would dismiss the knowledge base of historical fi gures who did not produce written texts by their own hand, Tubman does not benefi t from this argument— in the ways that Truth does with her celebrated “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech— since historical records have oft en reduced Tubman’s speech acts through misquotes and catch phrases. Whereas Truth’s speech and the writings of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825– 1911) and Harriet Jacobs (1813– 97) capture their historical subjectivity, Tubman is still discussed mostly as someone about whom others speak, her “voice” oft en projected by others.

Because of this, our detection of Tubman’s historical voice and agency re- quires nuance and careful analysis. Indeed, her biographers argue that Tub- man’s agency is based on her self- protected skill in oral storytelling. As Jean Humez suggests, “She had the ability to tell a tightly structured, entertaining story of adventure and quick- witted problem solving that charmed and dis- armed the listener, thus resisting editorial interference.”59 We might recognize Tubman’s resistance to her listener’s interference when she retells the story of the origins of her disability through muted humor and irony. As she remi- nisced, “I expect that [my] hair saved my life . . . I had a shoulder shawl of my mistress’s over my head, and when I got to the store I was shamed to go in. . . . [Th e overseer threw a weight that] struck me in the head and broke my skull and cut a piece of that shawl clean off and drove it into my head.”60

By recounting her self- consciousness in not having her hair well kept the day of her head injury— so that she felt compelled to wear a headscarf that, in hindsight, shielded her from a more lethal blow— Tubman recasts the mean- ing of her disability through the incongruity of her vanity saving her life, thus engaging in what Humez describes as “her strong desire to preserve her dig- nity and integrity in situations where her power to do so was limited.” Th is skill took on diff erent guises, including her ironic recounting of the ways that she utilized her sleeping spells to generate impressions of being “half- witted”

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 207

under the dominant white gaze, to conceal the brilliant woman underneath. In these ways Tubman illuminated resistance strategies that both deployed and subverted notions of disability, much like the various bondspeople and fugitives who employed the guise of disability to maneuver their bodies while under this gaze. Perhaps the most famous example is the fugitive Ellen Craft , who not only passed as a white man while posing as “master” to her darker- skinned husband, William Craft , but created the appearance of an “invalid” with a broken arm to avoid writing and thus exposing her illiteracy. Such en- deavors toward the passage to freedom suggest that performances of disability, as Boster argues, “were an undeniably powerful tool of subversion for antebel- lum slaves who relied on common emotional reactions to disabled individu- als, as well as the cultural impetus to conceal or obscure those individuals.”61

Th e ability of Tubman to perform as well as engage in storytelling framed the powerful episode “Minty,” during the second season of the television series Underground, featuring Aisha Hinds in the role of Harriet Tubman. Although this fi ctitious representation contributes to the ventriloquizing of Tubman’s voice for present- day audiences, Hinds nonetheless suggests, through her own spiritual testimony, that her body merely served as a “vessel” for that voice in her televised performance.62 Th is televised episode marks a departure from Tubman’s debut appearance in the fi nale of the fi rst season, in which she was more mythical than an actual historical fi gure. Th e show debuted in 2016. Co- creating it with Misha Green, Joe Pokaski commented on Tubman’s appearance in the season one fi nale: “I don’t think you tell the story of the Underground Railroad without touching on its Superman.”63 Th is invocation of Tubman as superman/superwoman serves as both fi gurative and rhetorical essentialism to the storyline. Her very fi rst appearance renders her a mere silhouette, whose face is darkened by the sunlight, thus serving as a phantom fi gure, one that also carries her trademark rifl e (per her biographers, Tubman only carried a pistol during her rescue journeys; however, the frontispiece depicting Tubman with her Civil War rifl e in Bradford’s biography obviously remains an iconic fi xture).

Called into being as an icon of resistance, Tubman is later revealed in the fl esh in the second season, in which she is shown toting both an axe (from her tree- chopping labor) and her renowned rifl e aimed at slave catchers, although recent biographies suggest she skillfully avoided such confrontations. Inter- estingly, Tubman avoids using her gun by bargaining instead for the fi nancial “value” of her fugitive cargo, thus reiterating the “exchangeable commodity” that Berry argues as the defi nitive existence for human chattel while also em- phasizing Tubman’s wit and creativity in being prepared for but eventually es- chewing a violent altercation. Nonetheless, the heart- racing suspense of this

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scene, played anachronistically yet fi ttingly to pop star Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” suggests the show’s investments in blurring the lines between fi ction and fact, and between history and the present.

Th is is reiterated with the “Minty” episode, focused exclusively on Tubman delivering a speech to an audience of abolitionists, which is framed at the beginning by Raphael Saadiq and Taura Stinson’s contemplative song “Gossypium Th orns,” with the opening lines, “Freedom/Has it ever been free?” Th e opening shot highlights Tubman grooming herself before a mirror in preparation for her speech, her scarred back visible underneath a corset, thus recalling the “tree” on Sethe’s back in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or more historically, the ex- slave Gordon, as depicted on the pages of Harper’s Weekly.64 Th is historical costuming and setting prepare the viewer for the “story” Tubman presents of her life while also grounding the drama in a present- day context with a mashup of lines from Bradford’s biography and other sources65 with present- day references to powerful men wanting to make this country “great again.” Even the warehouse setting, with a sign advertising an “auction,” renders Tubman ironically, given that the stage on which she stands was apparently used for slave auctions. Instead of highlighting Tubman as a body for sale, however, her voice is the main attraction for her audience, with her political message on the means of achieving freedom— delivered directly to the camera— doubling as an urgent call to present- day television viewers “to be a soldier . . . we can’t aff ord to be just citizens in a time of war. Th at would be surrender. Th at would be giving up our future and our souls. Ain’t nobody get to sit this one out, you hear me?”

What makes this episode remarkable is not just the searing performance of Aisha Hinds and the narrative’s analogous comparison between the past and the present, but also the resurrection of Harriet Tubman as an intellectual subject with a political voice and perspective that could impact present- day concerns. Her usual depiction as superwoman action fi gure takes a backseat in the “Minty” episode in the interest of honoring a black feminist intellectual history that we don’t oft en get when invoking Tubman’s memory mostly as an example of feminist practice instead of feminist theory. Th e show’s creators even referred to the episode as “Harriet Tubman’s TED Talk,”66 alluding to the contemporary intellectual speeches made available on the Internet. Th at Tub- man further describes her slave experience and discusses at length her dis- ability in this monologue does much to complicate her iconicity in popular culture and to expand on this historical discourse for black feminist disability studies.

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 209

Cultural Currency and the “Value” of Harriet Tubman

Because of her near ubiquity in the culture, we may deduce that Tubman’s eff orts during her lifetime to galvanize her heroic status through storytelling and fundraising initiatives were immensely successful. Yet the meanings that we attribute to this collective memory need further interrogation, especially when we connect present- day interpretations with Tubman’s own vision for her heroic portrait. Aft er all, there is something to be said for Tubman’s even- tual triumph over other iconic women, such as Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Rosa Parks, in the “Women on 20s” campaign to mark the up- coming centennial anniversary in 2020 of the Nineteenth Amendment grant- ing women the right to vote.

Did most voters in that campaign favor the masculinization and militariza- tion of Tubman’s status— given the popular stories of her gun- toting lead- ership on the Underground Railroad and in the Civil War— over the more feminine roles of suff ragettes and fi rst ladies, or even the feminized charac- terization of Rosa Parks (an anti- racist feminist activist in her own right, who is nonetheless reduced in the popular imagination to “tired but fed- up” seam- stress)? What makes Tubman such an enduring symbol in the pantheon of “great American womanhood,” despite her status as a formerly enslaved and disabled black woman— or perhaps because of it? How do visions of diversity and inclusion coalesce with status quo symbols of Americanness?

Present- day Americans can recall Harriet Tubman, even if only as an icon, precisely because of her eff orts to make sure that we remember her heroism. And yet, despite the popular vote and the eventual selection of Tubman by the Treasury Department for the paper currency, she was still subject to culture wars, in which conservatives— including then Republican presidential nomi- nee Donald J. Trump and champion of President Andrew Jackson (already on the front of the twenty- dollar paper currency and who will appear on the back of it to make room for Tubman for the future redesign)— decried what they viewed as out- of- control “political correctness.” Such arguments are not un- like an earlier time in the nineties when, as Sernett notes, Tubman became the “iconic embodiment of African American history”67 and the litmus test for race and gender inclusion in intense multicultural education debates. None- theless, most opinion polls in 2016 indicated that a sizeable majority of Amer- icans agreed with the choice of Tubman on the twenty- dollar note. Indeed, a diff erent political reclamation battle took place in the wake of the Treasury Department’s announcement, in which some conservatives reframed Tubman

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as a “gun- toting Republican,”68 while a few progressives questioned the appro- priateness of a freedom fi ghter appearing on currency that was once used to buy and sell the bodies of African Americans.69

Beyond these ahistorical arguments were the conversations on social media that proved unsophisticated in scope. Some voiced concerns that based on the available portraits of Tubman, she was not “pretty enough” or that she needed to smile. Given the somber expressions of the iconic men who already grace US currency, many immediately took off ense at these sexist expectations, in which Tubman was held to a gendered standard and subject to racial scrutiny. More than that, ableism complicates the racism and sexism undergirding these critiques, suggesting that her supposed unattractiveness was enough to discredit her heroic feats and, hence, the honor that comes with gracing our US paper currency. Although these arguments seem trivial, they do share similarities with an earlier time that witnessed what Susan Schweik calls the “ugly laws” of various city cultures during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which suppressed the public appearance of disabled citizens.70 While these laws refer to a diff erent era, they nonetheless share in a similar assessment expressed by some twenty- fi rst- century Americans, who view public fi gures like Tubman as lacking the prerequisite facial features that are deemed worthy for a woman’s visibility on something as ubiquitous as paper currency.

Given these aesthetic arguments, some African Americans— especially through “Black Twitter” and other social media platforms— began circulating an old Victorian photograph of an elegantly dressed dark- skinned woman, which was mislabeled “Young Harriet Tubman.”71 Here ableism intertwines with ageism, considering that the archival recovery work on the part of some black Internet users— in their quest to fi nd a “more attractive” portrait that they imagined to be Harriet Tubman— was inspired by disapprovals of the various mock- up designs of the twenty- dollar bill, as was used on the Women on 20s campaign website. Indeed, several of the circulating designs on the In- ternet drew on portraits of an elderly Tubman.

Some African Americans deemed more appropriate the mistaken portrait dating from 1862 (fi g. 1), which depicts the aristocrat Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843– 80)— born in West Africa and goddaughter to Queen Victoria. Given the photographic subject’s youthful appearance and her stylish wardrobe af- forded by the patronage of the monarch, favoring this image refl ects the typi- cal concerns about black public presentation and the politics of respectability. Th is studio portrait is not unlike the iconic photograph of Tubman (fi g. 2) dating from 1868, which similarly presents her in a standing pose while her hands rest on a chair. Tubman’s attire is plainer but dignifi ed, and she would

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 211

have been age forty- six, compared to nineteen- year- old Bonetta, having al- ready completed her work for the Underground Railroad and the Civil War while emerging as a mature and self- evolved woman who a year later would marry a considerably younger man. Moreover, unlike the garden chair posi- tioned in Bonetta’s photograph, with a book placed on its seat— both props symbolizing her upper- class leisure— the parlor chair that Tubman leans on bears a jacket and hat, which suggest both service and the more masculine clothes she may have worn while carrying out her emancipatory and war ac- tivities. Here Tubman consciously reframes her disabled black body in con- texts of expansive gender possibilities, productivity, and the transformative status of formerly enslaved subjects on the verge of full American citizen- ship— as represented by the parlor setting, a strategically placed book on a back table with its promise of education, and her refi ned but modest clothing.

In these ways Tubman created a multifaceted understanding of her own identity and joined her contemporaries, including Truth and Frederick Douglass (1815– 95), in embracing what Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby calls the “liberatory power of modernization”72 represented by the recently developed

Fig. 1. Sara Forbes Bonetta, photographed by Camille Silvy, 1862. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Fig. 2. Harriet Tubman, photographed by Harvey B. Lindsley, circa 1871– 1876. Library of Congress.

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technology of photography. As former bondspeople, who more than likely witnessed the dehumanizing and fetishizing portraits of naked black bodies— as depicted in publications like Types of Mankind and especially the whipped scars on the backs of slaves, as with the infamous example of Gordon— they utilized photography during the postbellum years in eff orts to self- defi ne and self- fashion the emancipated black body. Th at African Americans today would prefer the colonized subject adorned in fashionable attire, represented by Bonetta, over the emancipated subject of Tubman in humbler clothes speaks volumes about our present- day preoccupation with the body beautiful as well as the ironies of respectability politics that view liberatory portraits as holding less value than portraits framed by imperialist politics.

Th is is not to draw an arbitrary dichotomy between Bonetta and Tubman. Indeed, they are both linked in their proximity to Queen Victoria, not just in Bonetta’s close relationship with the monarch but also in Tubman’s correspondence with the queen, who— aft er reading Tubman’s biography and being “pleased with it”— had given her a silk lace and linen shawl along with a silver medal commemorating her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 in recognition of Tubman’s deliverance of slaves to freedom in Canada.73 Nonetheless, the histories of Bonetta and Tubman signify diff erent legacies impacting black women, which run deeper than photographic subjectivities.

Conclusion

Given the diverse responses to Tubman’s potential appearance on the US cur- rency, I sometimes entertain the idea of our revered icon miraculously re- turning to life in our own era. Not the fearless and militant Harriet but the young pubescent Minty— as vulnerable to the beauty messages that erode the self- esteem of our young black girls today as she was to the cruelty thrown at her in the form of a two- pound weight that injured her when she was already having what she admitted was a “bad hair” day when she wore that headscarf that may have saved her life. If such a scenario seems absurd, then what do we make of the conversations that dare to suggest she isn’t “pretty enough” to adorn our paper money? Despite the various claims made on Tubman’s ico- nicity, we are still challenged to “value” the qualities that she possessed.

Almost as if to challenge present- day audiences, Tubman resurfaced in early 2017 when a new photograph of her appeared for auction at New York’s Swann Galleries.74 Dating from the 1860s, this carte- de- visite depicts Tubman in a seated position while bedecked in a dark, elaborate bodice that contrasts

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 213

with a light- colored checkered hoop skirt (fi g. 3). Here her image pres- ents the “young Harriet Tubman” some had already longed for, and her self- fashioned body emanating elegance and femininity complicates the enduring icon of strong black womanhood.

For present- day audiences, this image contributes to the rewriting of American history, not just in a re- imagined visualization of Tubman, whose image and engraving for the new twenty- dollar currency is al- ready underway— despite the change in a presidential administration that opposes race- and- gender progressive politics— but also in the 2017 Ameri- can Liberty gold coin that imagined Lady Liberty as an African American woman for the fi rst time. One can- not help but detect the infl uence of the Treasury’s selection of Tubman in this latest manifestation of national

currency. In other words, we are fi nally reimaging the “great women” in our history.

Situating black women at the center of American memorial projects— with Tubman occupying prominent space— does much to challenge the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity in the culture. Th at such acknowledgments took place during the transition from the “racial progress” of President Obama to the “racist backlash” of President Trump highlights how black women’s bod- ies strategically displace national narratives. Tubman’s greatness— predicated somewhat on her disability, despite her hypervisibility as a superwoman— is underscored by her resistance, her retelling, and her reframing of her undeni- able worth as well as her eff orts to radicalize care and build community.

Nonetheless, as Clare reminds us, “Th ere are so many ways oppression and social injustice can mark a body, steal a body, feed lies and poison to a body. . . . But just as the body can be stolen, it can also be reclaimed.”75 Th at is the legacy of reclaiming Tubman’s corporeality and genius. She constantly

Fig. 3. Portrait of Harriet Tubman, photo- graphed by Benjamin F. Powelson, circa 1868– 1869. Library of Congress.

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redefi ned her own body as divine and valued “glory.” Her disabled, raced, and gendered sensibilities reevaluated her worth beyond the confi nes of systemic oppressions. Self- liberation requires as much.

Th at said, Tubman’s legacy for a black feminist praxis should move beyond a celebration of her strength and independence. We must now commemorate her through her complicated strength and vulnerability as well as her interde- pendence on a wider community based in caring and sustainable freedoms. It may be hard to think of Tubman as disabled because she presented her ac- complishments through an “able- bodied” lens; but then again, her very dis- ability constituted her strength and her visions for social justice. Her great- ness is merely an extension of that vision.

Janell Hobson is professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Uni- versity at Albany. She received her PhD in Women’s Studies from Emory University and is the author of two books: Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2005; 2nd ed. 2018) and Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Glo- balizing Gender (SUNY Press, 2012). She has edited a special issue on Harriet Tubman for the refereed journal Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Hobson also writes and blogs for Ms. Magazine and authored the cover story, “Beyoncé’s Fierce Feminism” (Spring 2018) for the publication. Her current projects address the inter- sections of black women’s histories and popular culture.

Notes

1. Vivian M. May, “Under- Th eorized and Under- Taught: Re- examining Harriet Tubman’s Place in Women’s Studies,” Meridians 12, no. 2 (2014): 28– 49, 33.

2. Nell Painter, “Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth’s Knowing and Becoming Known,” Journal of American History 81, no. 2 (September 1994): 461– 92.

3. Painter, “Representing Truth,” 480. 4. Carolyn Tyjewski, “Complexities and Messiness: Race, Gender, Disability and

the Carceral State (Part I),” Feminist Wire, August 11, 2015, http:// www .thefeministwire .com /2015 /08 /race - gender - disability - carceral - state - part - i/.

5. Eli Clare, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (Boston: South End Press, 1999), 2.

6. Sami Schalk, “Reevaluating the Supercrip,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Dis- ability Studies 10, no. 1 (2016): 71– 86, 72.

7. Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1978; repr., New York: Verso, 1990), 61.

8. Dea H. Boster, African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800– 1860 (New York: Routledge, 2013), 34– 35.

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 215

9. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: Th e Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 5.

10. Ellen Samuels, Fantasies of Identifi cation: Disability, Gender, Race (New York: NYU Press, 2014).

11. To understand how such laws had the eff ect of “disabling” bondspeople, literally and metaphorically, see Jenifer L. Barclay, “‘Th e Greatest Degree of Perfection’: Dis- ability and the Construction of Race in American Slave Law,” South Carolina Review 46 (2014): 27– 43.

12. Kate Cliff ord Larson, Harriet Tubman: Bound for the Promised Land— Portrait of an American Hero (New York: Random House, 2004), 79.

13. Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, NY: W. J. Moses, 1869), 13– 14.

14. Daina Ramey Berry, Th e Price for Th eir Pound of Flesh: Th e Value of the En- slaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017), 4.

15. Milton C. Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

16. Larson, Harriet Tubman, 42. 17. Dea Boster, “An ‘Epileptick’ Bondwoman: Fits, Slavery, and Power in the

Antebellum South,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 271– 301, 294.

18. Larson, Harriet Tubman, 53. 19. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, 79. 20. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. 21. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, 56. 22. Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History, 144. 23. Schalk, “Reevaluating the Supercrip,” 81. 24. Harriet Tubman once famously prophesied, “My people are free,” while visiting

the home of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet in New York in 1860, three years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Cited in Jean M. Humez, Harriet Tubman: Th e Life and the Life Stories (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 258.

25. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Prophecy in the Present Tense: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee Pilgrimage, and Dreams Coming True,” Meridians 12, no. 2 (2014): 142– 52, 143.

26. Katie Geneva Cannon, “Christian Imperialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 127– 34.

27. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, 19, emphasis in original. 28. Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle

West,” Signs 14, no. 4 (Summer 1989): 912– 20, 912. 29. Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: Th e Impact of Black Women on Race

and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984).

216 Frontiers/2019/Vol. 40, No. 2

30. Cited in Larson, Harriet Tubman, 276. 31. Cited in Larson, Harriet Tubman, 282. 32. Larson, Harriet Tubman, 282. 33. Margaret Price, “Th e Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain,” Hypatia

30, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 268– 84, 280. 34. Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet Tubman, the Moses of Her People (New York: George

R. Lockwood and Son, 1886), 95. 35. Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History, 258. 36. Larson, Harriet Tubman, 284– 85. 37. Larson, Harriet Tubman, 282. 38. Eva Feder Kittay, “Centering Justice on Dependency and Recovering Freedom,”

Hypatia 30, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 285– 91. 39. She would not receive a pension until 1899 (Larson, Harriet Tubman, 278– 279). 40. Christopher M Bell, ed., Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and

Cultural Interventions (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011), 3. 41. Wallace, Black Macho, 151. 42. Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World

Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 76. 43. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “African- American Women’s History and the

Metalanguage of Race,” Signs 17, no. 2 (Winter1992): 251– 74, 252. 44. Rosemarie Garland- Th omson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist

Th eory,” NWSA Journal 14, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 1– 32. 45. Kim Q., ed., Feminist Disability Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

2011), 4. 46. Garland- Th omson, “Integrating Disability,” 7. 47. Nirmala Erevelles, “Th e Color of Violence: Refl ecting on Gender, Race, and

Disability in Wartime,” in Feminist Disability Studies, ed. Kim Q. Hall, 117– 35 (Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 119.

48. Samuel George Morton, Josiah Clark Nott, George R. Glidden et al., Types of Mankind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Company, 1854).

49. Boster, African American Slavery and Disability, 21. 50. Sander Gilman, Diff erence and Pathology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1985), 101. 51. Price, “Th e Bodymind Problem,” 269. 52. Ashley Taylor, “Th e Discourse of Pathology: Reproducing the Able Mind

through Bodies of Color,” Hypatia 30, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 181– 98. 53. Cited in Martha S. Jones, “Histories, Fictions, and Black Womanhood Bodies:

Race and Gender in Twenty- First Century Politics,” in Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, ed. Mia Bay, Farah Jasmine Griffi n, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage, 273– 87 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 281.

Hobson: Of “Sound” and “Unsound” Body and Mind 217

54. Jones, “Histories, Fictions, and Black Womanhood Bodies.” 55. Mia Bay et al., eds., Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, 23. 56. Mark Reinhardt, “Who Speaks for Margaret Garner? Slavery, Silence, and the

Politics of Ventriloquism,” Critical Inquiry 29, no. 1 (Autumn 2002): 81– 119. 57. Painter, “Representing Truth,” 470– 74. 58. Painter, “Representing Truth,” 465. 59. Humez, Harriet Tubman: Th e Life and the Life Stories, 193. 60. Cited in Humez, Harriet Tubman: Th e Life and the Life Stories, 177. 61. Dea H. Boster, “‘I Made Up My Mind to Act Both Deaf and Dumb’: Displays

of Disability and Slave Resistance in the American South,” in Disability and Passing: Blurring the Lines of Identity, ed. Jeff rey A. Brune and Daniel J. Wilson, 71– 98 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 92.

62. Aisha Hinds, on a plenary panel at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Conference, in Cambridge, Maryland, May 19, 2016.

63. Quoted in Bethanie Butler, “Yes, the New Character in the Th rilling ‘Under- ground’ Finale Is Exactly Who You Th ink It Is,” Washington Post, May 11, 2016, https:// www .washingtonpost .com /news /arts - and - entertainment /wp /2016 /05 /11 /yes - the - new - character - in - the - thrilling - underground - fi nale - is - exactly - who - you - think - it - is / ?utm _term = .e9d1a8952f73.

64. “A Typical Negro,” Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863, 429. 65. Other famous lines, such as “I had a right to liberty or death,” appear in

Benjamin Drew, A North Side View of Slavery. Th e Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by Th emselves, with an Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada (Boston: J. P. Jewett and Company, 1856).

66. Joe Otterson, “‘Underground’ EP Breaks Down Harriet Tubman’s ‘TED Talk’ in Minty,” Variety, April 12, 2017, http:// variety .com /2017 /tv /news /underground - harriet - tubman - aisha - hinds - minty - 1202029319.

67. Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History, 35. 68. Daniel John Sobieski, “Harriet Tubman Was a Gun- toting Republican,”

American Th inker, April 22, 2016, http:// www .americanthinker .com /blog /2016 /04 /harriet _tubman _was _a _guntoting _republican .html.

69. Danielle Paquette, “Th e Irony of Putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill,” Washington Post, April 20, 2016, https:// www .washingtonpost .com /news /wonk /wp /2016 /04 /20 /the - irony - of - putting - harriet - tubman - on - the - 20 - bill/.

70. Susan M. Schweik, Th e Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York: NYU Press, 2009).

71. Abi Ishola, “Harriet Tubman Doesn’t Need to Look Glamorous on the $20 Bill,” Beyond Classically Beautiful, May 30, 2016, http:// beyondclassicallybeautiful .com /2016 /05 /harriet - tubman - doesnt - need - look - glamorous - 20 - bill/.

72. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Enduring Truths: Sojourner’s Shadow and Substance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 12.

218 Frontiers/2019/Vol. 40, No. 2

73. Tubman was buried with her silver medal (Larson, Harriet Tubman, 281, 289), and her silk and lace shawl is on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

74. Swann Auction Galleries, “Printed and Manuscript African Americana,” http:// www .swanngalleries .com /auctions /2441 - african - americana.

75. Eli Clare, “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness,” Public Culture 13, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 359– 65, 362– 63.

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