LAKE PLACID — John Brown Lives! launches its 25th-anniversary with a fall harvest reception welcoming historian Dr. Tiya Miles and sculptor Wesley Wofford, who will be visiting the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, 115 John Brown Road, Lake Placid today from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Visitors can also view the voting rights history of the United States installation with artist Ren Davidson Seward and the “Before She Was Harriet” StoryWalk® about Harriet Tubman installed at the site and sponsored by the Lake Placid Public Library. Children’s librarian Karen Armstrong is coordinating art activities for children and families and refreshments will be served in the Upper Barn.
FACETS OF HARRIET TUBMAN
Wofford’s “Beacon of Hope” statue of Harriet Tubman has been interpreted at the John Brown Farm since July and will be de-installed on Oct. 16 and moved to Niagara Falls.
#BE THE BEACON
“The Beacon of Hope” is a monument that tells Harriet Tubman’s continuing story; that amplifies her message of equality, so that all may hear it; and that chronicles her journey. It is our hope that generations of children and adults alike will find the inspiration and the courage to walk in her footsteps and draw strength from the powerful story of one of our great American heroes, finding it within themselves to become “The Beacon of Hope” for others, according to woffordsculpturestudio.com
“NIGHT FLYER”
Miles’s latest work is “Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People.”
On Sunday, there will be a book talk and signing from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. with Miles at the Adirondack Community Church, 2583 Main St. Lake Placid (across from the Lake Placid Post Office). Doors open as at 12:45 p.m. In appreciation of teachers, John Brown Lives! will give a free, signed copy of “Night Flyer” to the first three educators who walk in the door.
Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University. She is a public historian, academic historian, and creative writer whose work primarily explores the intersections of African American, Native American, and women’s histories in the context of place.
She has become increasingly focused on ecological questions, environmental storytelling, and ways of articulating and enlivening Black environmental consciousness, according to harvard.edu.
The weekend events are free, open to all and made possible with support from North Elba LEAF, Stewart’s/Dake Family Foundation, Humanities New York, SUNY-ESF’s Timbuctoo Institute, Crowne Plaza Lake Placid, Lake Champlain Basin Program, an angel donor, and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
EMAIL INTERVIEW
RC: In a “Poured Over” interview with Mewa Messer, you spoke about how someone at an environmental conference pointed out to you that Harriet Tubman as an environmentalist. Please recount that moment and how it led to “Night Flyer.”
TM: In 2005, when I was on the faculty of the University of Michigan, I spoke about my research at a conference celebrating the anniversary of UM’s Center for Afroamerican & African Studies there. Another faculty member, the environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor, now at Yale, pulled me aside during a break to share some thoughts. Knowing that I studied Black enslaved women, she told me that Harriet Tubman must have been an environmentalist because she would have to notice and understand the natural signs around her. That conversation planted a seed that has grown into two book projects for me, Night Flyer, and my fall 2023 release, Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who challenged a Nation. Night Flyer is suffused by this concept, slightly altered in my rendering, that we can see Tubman as an ecologist (someone attentive to the relationships between and among living things, human and non-human).
RC: What were your most surprising discoveries?
TM: Most histories indicate that Tubman never birthed children and that she adopted a daughter later in life when she lived in Auburn, New York. I was surprised to come away from my writing with a strengthened sense of the possibility that Tubman may have given birth to a daughter before she escaped from the South. The historians Catherine Clinton and Kate Larson have both explored this possibility in their excellent biographies of Tubman. My engagement with their arguments and close consideration of the timeline of Tubman’s illness prior to her escape led me to think that this idea is more than a notion.
RC: Did you visit Maryland’s Eastern Shore, specifically the places in Dorchester and Talbot counties and Delaware where Tubman traversed? Was this your first visit there in concert with this book or have you been before? Did the landscape inform your narrative at all? If so, how?
TM: Yes, I did visit Maryland while researching the book. While there, I spent time in Dorchester County. It was much more remote and rural than I expected. It was also full of water (the Chesapeake Bay, swamps, marshlands, rivers, creeks, rivulets) in ways that transformed my sense of Tubman’s early life. I was lucky that a local resident who knew the area drove me to the various historic sites related to Tubman’s personal history. I never would have been able to navigate those rural roads alone. Recently, I was in a small Delaware town on the Chesapeake Bay – Lewes, which is not far from Tubman’s likely route through that state. This trip, too, was important. Being in the places where Tubman was born, worked, and walked has made a strong impression on me and certainly informed the mood of the book. If any of your readers are interested in walking Tubman’s land routes, I would suggest that they look up the We Walk With Harriet Project in Dorchester County, Maryland, run by the museum director Linda Harris. (Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center, 424 Race St., Cambridge, Maryland.)
RC: What does Night Flyer offer to us today in these times?
TM: As an account of Harriet Tubman’s difficult yet inspiring life, and a description of the luminous pragmatism that got her through the worst of times, Night Flyer offers us ways to think about how we might respond to our current fears and crises.
RC: How did you decide upon the book’s title?
TM: As I wrote the book, the image of Tubman flying, in more ways than one, kept recurring for me. She imagined herself as a bird and saw herself flying when she dreamed at night about crossing a geographical line between slavery and freedom. Later, when she did escape in 1849, she “flew” through the woods at night as she ran to save herself. Finally, she “flew” beneath the stars while helping to rescue many other freedom seekers. Physically and spiritually, Harriet Tubman was a night flyer. The subtitle came to mind immediately after I had the title. With it, I meant to convey that this book is not about Tubman alone, but rather, it is about Tubman as part of a community. Many people, like her, dreamed of freedom and held onto that hope through their religious faith. Though enslaved by society, Black people had the right to be free in the eyes of the God that Tubman believed in.
RC: How and why did you construct the book the way you did?
TM: The book follows what I would describe as a biographical storyline mapped onto the spiritual arc of Tubman’s life.