Harriet Tubman: Citations en anglais
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Attributed to Tubman in Dorothy Winbush Riley, My Soul Looks Back 'Less I Forget https://books.google.com/books?id=KpcLAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22c.+1865%22 p. 148 (1993). Riley gives a date of "c. 1865" but offers no citation. No source from earlier than 1993 is known. Quoted in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999) by Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, p. 299. Tubman specialists like Jean H. Humez and Kate Clifford Larson deem this one completely spurious. See "Bogus Tubman," by Steve Perisho http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2014/03/bogus-tubman-i-freed-thousands-of.html.<!-- Someone cited this as being in Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886) by Sarah H. Bradford, but it does not occur in the editions available online. -->
Disputed
Variante: I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.
Modernized rendition: I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
The phrase "" is a slogan made famous during the independence struggle of several countries.
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)
Variante: There was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would take the other, for no man should take me alive. I should fight for liberty as long as my strength lasted.
Contexte: I had reasoned dis out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when de time came for me to go, de Lord would let dem take me.
“Oh, Lord! You've been wid me in six troubles, don't desert me in the seventh!”
Modernized rendition: Oh, Lord! You've been with me in six troubles, don't desert me in the seventh!
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)
"Harriet Tubman never said this — it comes from one of the scores of juvenile Harriet Tubman fictionalized biographies." — Kate Larson, Harriet Tubman biographer.
Disputed
As quoted in Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1971), by Sarah Hopkins Bradford, Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, pp. 14-15.
On realizing that she had passed out of the slavery states into the northern states
Modernized rendition: I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)
As quoted in Women's Words : The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women (1996) by Mary Biggs, p. 2
“I love all of the african americans like they are my children.”
"African american" seems an ananchronistic term here, as the term was seldom used before the 1970s.
Disputed
As quoted in The Underground Railroad (1987) by Charles L. Blockson
Modernized rendition: I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
The phrase "Liberty or Death" is a slogan made famous during the independence struggle of several countries.
1880s, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886)
