“People wanted to forget”

At age 82, Valerie Ross Manokey knows that her memory is fading a bit. But the retired teacher’s aide in Cambridge, Maryland, who is Tubman’s great-grandniece, becomes animated when recalling bits of family lore. “We know Harriet was born nearby—we say ‘down the country’ because the area is not that big,” she says of Dorchester County, a rural enclave on Maryland’s eastern shore. “She was very intelligent, very kind, and worked very, very hard just to survive.” Manokey has held her own grandchildren in rapt attention with stories passed down by her maternal ancestors. “There was one place where my aunt and [fugitive slaves] were,” she says. “The soldiers were coming through and they had to hide. The house had an opening in the floor, and they all climbed down to hide until the soldiers left.”

The painful legacy of slavery meant stories often did not survive from generation to generation. “Grandma said that when their family members came out of slavery, people didn’t really want to talk about all of that,” Tina says. “She said people wanted to forget. They just wanted to move forward.”

Tina kept her lineage private for years. “Once, when I was very young, I told someone I was related to Harriet, and they said, ‘Oh yeah, well maybe my father is the president of the United States,’” she remembers. “That told me, ‘OK, zip your lips, be quiet, don’t tell anybody ever again.’” She stayed quiet until high school. “A teacher was teaching black history. It was something that we really fought for: a curriculum change to reflect the times; we wanted to know about our own history, and for it to be taught in our own schools. And she came up to me as we were changing classes, and asked, ‘Is it true that Harriet Tubman is your relative?’ I just stood there looking at her like, ‘Where’d you get that from? I’ve never told anybody.’ I just said yes and then I scurried off,” she says. It wasn’t until years later, when a family member was researching their history, that she started opening up about it more.

“She was humble…but powerful beyond measure”

For years Lauren Jillian Wyatt, great-great-great-great-grandniece of Tubman, and Tina’s daughter, didn’t reveal her ties to Tubman either. “I feared people would question its truth,” says the 32-year-old fashion consultant and writer in Washington, D.C. “I would imagine them searching the surface of my face—dissecting the width of my nose, the tint of my skin, the shape of my eyes—trying to find something reminiscent of this giant woman in me.” But Lauren always felt a deep connection to Aunt Harriet’s spirit, “especially the warrior in her—the steadfast, strategic fighter who wholeheartedly loved her people and did all she could through the conviction of a purpose beyond her own,” she says. “This not only enabled her to impact her own life and that of her family, but her entire surrounding and extended communities for generations to come.”

Tina believes new efforts to remember Tubman’s legacy are vital. “The impact of having Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill would recognize a need and send a message of healing,” she says of the Obama Administration proposal, in 2016, to put the abolitionist hero on the third most commonly used bill in America. While the Trump Administration has put the idea on hold, U.S. representatives Elijah Cummings (D–Md.) and John Katko (R–N.Y.) recently reintroduced bipartisan legislation in Congress that aims to revive the currency effort.

“She was a leader who has earned the right to be on the bill,” says Tina. “We have to remember when this country was formed, it was done so within a racially segregated, male-dominated society. Women were not allowed any titled or lead roles or consideration; black women were not even thought of.” For Lauren, the lessons of Tubman’s work—including how she advocated for women’s voting rights and provided care to the aged, infirm, and homeless—are essential in 2019. “The balance of responsibility. The risk and reward in loving all people, but especially her own people unselfishly,” she ticks off the list. “Being guided by an inherent and deeply rooted faith. Having an unwavering conviction regarding equality, justice, and economic opportunity…. She was humble and dignified, but powerful beyond measure.”

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