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December 23, 2024 11 mins

For “An Army of Normal Dead Folks”, we celebrate Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave who rescued over 100 slaves on the Underground Railroad. And Real Heroes Larry Reed reveals fascinating stories about her that we had never heard before! 

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
She immediately said, I'm going to do what I can
to bring to freedom as many others who are enslaved
as possible, and she ended up making thirteen excursions, at
great personal risk, back into slave states to escort on
the so called underground Railroad as many slaves to freedom
as she could. She ended up rescuing about one hundred slaves.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
inner City Memphis. And the last part, well, somehow it
led to an oscar for the film about our team.
It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never

(00:50):
be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice
suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks, US, just
you and me deciding you know what I can help,
and that's exactly what You're ready. Harriet Tubman did, the

(01:11):
former slave, is the most well known conductor on the
Underground Railroad, and today, along with Larry Reed, the author
of Real Heroes, We Pay tribute to her as part
of our special series and Army of Normal Dead Folks. Guys,
I know you've heard the name, but there's so much
about her I learned from Larry. I cannot wait if

(01:33):
you have to learn more about it. Right after these
brief messages from our general sponsors. One who's everybody named.

(01:56):
Everybody knows the name Harriet Tubman, Yes, chapter eleven. I
was unaware of some of the stuff that happened later
in her life, Yes, and her unbelievable toughness. So everybody
knows Harriet Tubman ran the underground railroad, saved runaway and

(02:18):
slaves from the South. But there's so much more to
her story. And I love the subtitle of the chapter,
which is she never lost a passenger. That's right. Tell
us not what we know about Harriet Tubman, but what
we don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, the basic story of Harriet Tubman may be well known,
but there are fascinating things about her that have been
somewhat forgotten. She was, of course a slave well into
her twenties, but she was one who decided at some
point she was going to bolt for freedom, and she did,

(02:57):
and she successfully made her way from a slave plantation
in the South to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.
And the thing that I most appreciate about Harriet Tubman
is that she didn't stop there. She was committed not
just to her own freedom, which she cherished and risked

(03:20):
greatly to achieve, but once she achieved it, she was
interested then immediately in the freedom of others. She could
have stayed in Philadelphia the rest of her life, done
any number of things, and left the whole slave story
behind her, but no, she immediately said, I'm going to
do what I can to bring to freedom as many
others who are enslaved as possible, and she ended up

(03:43):
making thirteen excursions, at great personal risk back into slave
states to escort on the so called underground Railroad as
many slaves to freedom as she could. Some are runaway slaves, yes,
some were members of her family, most she did not know.
She ended up rescuing about one hundred slaves and personally

(04:06):
escorting them under the cover of darkness.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
So it's important when people hear that story, that sounds awesome,
but I think it's important to put in context the
the physical demands it took to do that, the environment
in which she did that. That was really outlaid well

(04:32):
in the chapter share that.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
So, you know, it's one thing to say, well, she
went down South under the cover of darkness, picked people up,
and got I'm slavery, and that is a great story,
but the context about what these folks had to endure
is really important.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Oh yeah, I mean it wasn't like she bought a
bus ticket and went down on a freeway to someplace
in the Deep South and everybody just boarded the bus
and she escorted them.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
She wasn't a freedom rider.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
No, that's right. She had to do this, not not
only under the cover of darkness, but she had to
outrun dogs.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Who would have chewed her and her absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
And they were having to scramble through briars and brush
and through the woods and having to somehow sustain themselves
for days on end. They couldn't walk into a store
and buy lunch, you know, I mean, they would have
been immediately apprehended.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
So they often wet.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, absolutely, no matter what the weather or not.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
When I read that, I was thinking, how did they
get hyperthermic? Some of them?

Speaker 1 (05:35):
You know, I'm sure some came close. I don't know
all the details, but they had to endure some horrific conditions,
whether as well as all the things you endure when
you're on the run and can't do anything that might
reveal yourself to the powers that be. They're all looking
for it. She did that thirteen times and saved almost

(05:58):
one hundred people.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah. I got to believe after the first trip, I'd
have been like, Wow, I helped these six, seven, eight
nine people and that was great. But that trip sucked
and I ain't doing it again.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, yeah, she did. She had a bounty on her
head and she knew that that if she had been captured.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
The publicly, they would have made an example of her.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah. Well, the most amazing thing I think about her
involved something that happened when she was a slave and
that she had to deal with for decades thereafter. I
don't know the details of the incident, but somebody, probably
the foreman of the at the slave plantation where she was,
struck her in the head with a metal object and

(06:43):
it caused her for decades thereafter after to suffer headaches, migraines,
occasional dizziness, and blurriness of vision. It was a problem
until she was an old lady.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
She's brain damage.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, and yet she was doing all this rescue work
suffering that personally at the same time. In the eighteen nineties,
when she was seventy, in her seventies anyway, long after
the end of the Civil War, she decided to have
surgery on her head to see if the surgeons could

(07:16):
provide some relief. And the incredible thing is that she
refused anesthesia.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Which when I read that, I just cannot believe it.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, I tell you what a tough bird this woman was.
But she didn't want any anesthesia, which back then was
crude ether. But no anesthesia. She said, just give me
a bullet and I'll bite down on it and go
ahead and do your thing. And so they opened up
the top of her head. In fact, the way she
put it, she lived another fifteen years with tremendous relief

(07:50):
thanks to that surgery, and she would often talk about it,
and the line she frequently used was, Yeah, they took
the top of my head off and rattled around in
the air, put it back, and I felt fine ever since?

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well she did, Yeah, she did without and they cut
the top of her skull off. Yea while she bit
on a bullet. Yeah, is that does that tell you
what to described. I mean, yeah, holy spokes. When I
read that, I was astounded. I had no idea that story.
She also served in the military, Yes she did. I
think she led. She was like the first female armed

(08:27):
combatant or something.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, and she led a unit that liberated about six
hundred more slaves during this during the Civil War. But
she did that as a commander of a Union unit.
Liberating six hundred slaves. Isn't that amazing?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yes, Harry Tubman is amazing. And I don't know how.
I mean, we sit around and we think, oh, we
see these injustices, or we see these problems in our
communities and our society, and how do we get involved
and everything else. This is a former slave. She had nothing,

(09:05):
she didn't even have her own liberty, and she saved
hundreds of lives and changed the way the world looked
at slavery. And if she can do that, how in
the hell is it we can't cross the street and
read to some kids to help with literacy, or one

(09:26):
of a thousand other things you can come up with.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
It surely makes the efforts of most of us look
rather puty when it comes to liberating people. When you
see what she did, and the risks that she undertook.
I think we should thank our lucky stars, thank God
every day that there have been people in history like
Harriet Tubman who didn't care what the odds for success

(09:50):
might be, didn't care what the obstacles were. When they
knew what the right thing was to do, they mustered
the courage and got it done. I'm not sure everybody
would do that. It's these uncommon people like Harriet Tubman
to whom I think the world owes such an enormous,
unpayable debt of gratitude.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
And should learn lessons and garner inspiration from. Absolutely Thank
you for joining us for this special series and army
of normal dead folks. See I said it happier that time.
I think Harry Toughan would love it just saying yeah,

(10:33):
thank you for joining us for an army of normal
dead folks. If Harriet Tubman or other episodes have inspired
you in general, or better yet, by taking action by
making your own stand in our time, buying Larry Reid's
book Real Heroes where this story came from, or if
you have stories for this series, please let me know.

(10:55):
I'd love to hear about it. You can write me
anytime at Bill at normal folks dot org, and I
promise I will respond unless I'm dead. And if you
enjoy this episode, share a friends and on social subscribe
to the podcast, rate and review it. Join the army
at normalfolks dot us consider becoming a Premium member any

(11:18):
and all of these things that will help us grow
an army of normal folks. Thanks to our producer, Ironlight Labs,
I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can
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Bill Courtney

Bill Courtney

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