I found out that all the media people were distraught, totally distraught over the fact that hillary lost. I discovered something that i never understood. Why did they not fact [inaudible] as a regular person. Guest a regular person. Anybody distraught on election day wanting to be vindicated in the mall we have a president that is that he will not accept the result of the election if he loses, and that would be the end of america as we know it. I dont know what you are referring to specifically though. Host rick perlsteins most recent book is called a reaganland americas write a term 19761980. Its one of the four that hes written about conservatism in america and we thank you for joining us for the callin program on booktv. Guest what an honor. Thank you. Host coming up in half an hour, we have diamond and silk for a call in the program talking about their new book uprising who the hell said you cant ditch and switch. Thats coming up live on booktv. But now we return to the National Book festival. Erica Armstrong Dunbar is talking about her book, she came to slay about Harriet Tubman and she is in conversation with the librarian of congress, carla hayden. Here it is. History and biography is sponsored by wells fargo. Host hello, im carla hayden and its my pleasure to be here with the author, and really wonderful person to talk about history and race and just challenges during this time, erica Armstrong Dunbar. And she is the author of one of my new favorite books, she came to slay. And its the life and times of. Tubman. Erica, thank you for doing this. We appreciate it. Your book is really groundbreaking. Guest thank you. And the first of all, thank you for inviting me on. And for really taking the time to have this conversation. I love to talk about history, but more specifically about the lives of africanamerican women during the 19th century. Harriet tubman it became very clear early on that it was time to do a bit of a refresher on Harriet Tubman and how to think of her as a person, clearly as an activist. Right now we are thinking about what is social justice and activism looks like and there is no better representation of it at least in the century than Harriet Tubman, so its wonderful to be able to talk about her. Host whats wonderful about your book is that you bring out things about Harriet Tubmans life that most of us who, and some of us who think we know a little bit about history, we definitely know about the underground railroad, but you bring up so much about her, her role as the womens suffrage movement. Guest my goal, but i wanted to do is write something first that was accessible, attractive, that was modern. And that really gave us the opportunity to think about Harriet Tubman as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, as a leading activist on the underground, someone involved and really serving as a servant leader. Thats what she would call herself maybe. I wanted to move away from that period that we know about her, that sort of time period ten, 11, 12 years where shes serving on the underground. I think most people, most americans at least know Harriet Tubman was involved in the underground railroad, but i was interested at getting out who she was and what she was before during that time and to think about her holistically. And then who she was towards the end of her life. Host i had to mention what she was like as a child because it literally gave me chills to write about what she had to go through as a 6yearold. And when you think about a sixyearolds, the things that were presented to her in her life could you elaborate on that . I dont think we know enough. Guest she wasnt born Harriet Tubman. Her parents she was born to a loving family on the Eastern Shore of maryland and was one of nine children. One of the incredible things about her life is that her parents, even though they didnt live together for the entirety of their times in maryland, they managed to do almost the impossible which is to keep their family together. And if there is a moment where there is a transition to the work one would be expected to do for the majority of their life and that comes when shes 6yearsold and hired out away from her mother and family, and shes basically forced to do what i would call adult work along the Eastern Shore of maryland taking dead rodents out of traps and doing domestic labor, difficult labor. We think about what we expect of our children and what the sixyearolds are doing. She was exposed to a very difficult hard life away from her family and had to deal with illness and loneliness. You think about the fear that must have penetrated her life, and this is something that perhaps she didnt know it then, but a perhaps it was preparing her. Host because of the things that she endured even after that, one aspect was being a nurse that we dont hear about as much. Guest the beginning and at the after and what people need to remember. They grew up during hard labor, lifting heavy bags into wagons and at the same time she still managed to find love. She marries a man by the name of john tubman. Doing what all enslaved people were doing at that time, living under the oppression of White Supremacy of slavery and she does that and that in itself is incredible. But then to build a network and finally make a decision that she was going to leave behind a family that she knew and loved and could escape from the Eastern Shore of maryland. Host i have to tell you your writing is so vivid you make her story into something that is so compelling even her disappointment in love and how that feels and finding love later in life brings to light and we thank you for that. You also mentioned earlier that you wanted to make this book accessible and o modern and i he to tell you was part and a unit of the party possibly where you left i thought this is really cool and Susan B Anthony and can you tell people a little bit more complex. Guest i did these in the book because we feel like we see that kind of static image of her usually somewhere near Frederick Douglass and thats sort of it. I wanted to write something that would be an engaging to a younger audience and i guess to maybe millennials, folks that were in that static image. She was a woman that found love and had to disappointment. She got angry and she carried a weapon. I call my friends my homies. Host john brown, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady stanton, Susan B Anthony. They were powerhouses. So to have that, and there was tension as i understand. Guest when we moved to this moment we are celebrating order commemorating the anniversary to give the right to vote, Harriet Tubman is right in there advocating for the suffrage for women as early as 1860 shes with Elizabeth Cady stanton, lucretia mond, other whiteswhite suffragists that wee pushing the needle attempting to get women the right to vote and there was great tension and this is something we kind of reckon with as we move into this moment we know that actually black women dont receive that right or at least it is withdrawn from them over time and it is in this interesting position because shes worked with these suffragists. If they were allies in that respect, but many of them were quite angry black men had been given the right to vote and they were still shut out and disenfranchised. She felt like she had to choose, but she didnt. As a politician she had relationships with this older generation of white women involved in evolution, but then you have other people like eydie wells pushing a different agenda and tubman manages to walk the line and remains engaged as well as the kind of new Womens Movement pushing for the right to vote from a different angle. Host one of the last photographs of her that people are used to seeing she was attending one of the meetings. Guest she is still super involved into this as is a womn who at this time has moved to living at home basically, in a home for the elderly but which she helped create. Shes building homes for those that have been, didnt have a social network and one thing we have to remember is tubman remained poor much of her life, she struggled and this was the state that most dealt with and she wanted to make certain that they would live and die in dignity so creating a home in the moment it becomes almost as important as her work improving the life conditions. She was an advocate and a social justice activist. Host what do you think she would have called herself when she had to put out a label. Guest she was deeply religious and didnt necessarily enjoy the spotlight unlike her contemporary both from maryland and both having spent time and escaping. Then we think about how their lives moved differently and douglas becomes the or greater, everyone knows him and the situation is different. She is running the underground railroad and bringing people back and forth out of enslavement and when we think about her returning to the Eastern Shore of maryland up to 13 times rescuing between 60 to 70 people, that task is so herculean its almost hard to believe that it actually happened, but we know that it did. And she didnt get enough respect and material wealth from it. If she called herself a leader which im not sure she would have, everything she did she offer to this over and over again. Everything she did was because of her god and so her deep christianity and faith fueled her. Host you included a photograph of the Eastern Shore to show how tricky tha the terrn is and still remains as we think about it. And all of her early chores and things she had the physical strength and grant. To ddo you wonder when you talk about the times, did some of this have to do with her being a woman . Guest it asks us to think about enslavement and gender and what we know is that a majority of those who made this act of resistance by running from their enslavers, the majority of them were men and of the majority of them were young men in part because if they had children they may not have looked on thee same form as was the case with Harriet Tubman. For many women, they were left on the farm with a plantation taking care of children and their youngest and the idea of attempting to escape was maybe leaving them behind was too unimaginable for most. Area tubman wasnt in that position. Of course her escape but then afterwords to the political speech and platform it wasnt quite as open and there were some parts thats the reason why tubman isnt a part of that. We dont glorify her until many years after her death. Host and Sojourner Truth said the same about being a woman and they interacted. Guest they did, and this was the moment of the civil war and most Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, of course Sojourner Truth a northern enslavement and then the freedom. With tubman it was very different. And i actually didnt agree on some things politically. Sojourner truth was much more a fan of Abraham Lincoln the unwise. Tubman at first. Later on she changes her to in a bit. But tubman didnt really trust lincoln and feel of course during the era of the civil war she wondered what it was going to look like. Before that, she was homies with people like john brown. It doesnt get any more radical than that. Shes planning this come up in canada she feels like shes someone that can harness this energy and shes like okay. Shes ready in a way when john brown approaches and douglas is like host you have some of her things and is a le lovely wrap o you. And in fact, a famous quote let me wrap to you real quick, Harriet Tubman cloak and that is bringing the story to life you were also able to deal with difficult aspects especially about being a woman and you handled that very truthfully but delicate to speak to the power of your writing. Guest the Younger Generation may not be as interested or want to deal with the trauma that it imposes. Sometimes there is an attempt to dismantle and i dont want to remember that part of our history and i think right now that is very clear as we are dealing with monuments and what historwithhistory looked like at means and how weve represented ourselves as a nation. But i am always going to say that you must understand the past, no matter how difficult and no matter how uncomfortable it is because that is what forms the present. And if we want to progress, we have to reconcile with the difficulty of the past. One of the ways, one of my techniques i am meeting people where they are and to make it a little more modern thats what i would say to a friend of mine when i on the phone, but basically that is what Harriet Tubman was saying. I wanted us to be familiar with her work. We are focused on the few images that we have of her that she was someone who had her narrative by someone else but i wanted us also to be able to focus on the words that she spoke and to do it in a way that was relatable. Host she set iv said ive n hundreds of escaped slaves but never one that was willing to go back and be a slave. She helped people make that decision in terms of not wanting to go back and her determination and all of that. There was one of two things i had a right to, liberty or death i should fight for my liberty as long as it lasts and when the time came for me to go with the lord would let them take it. Guest we get back to this end of the word that jumps out at me is liberty. This is a language the Founding Fathers were using in the 70s and 80s and this is a language that has an enslaved people that this was about the fight for the right and as if that was not an option that the alternative even that is a choice to be able to live or die and it reminds us once again that someone was willing to fight for liberty and freedom up to the death and every time she returned to the Eastern Shore of maryland, she put her rights in jeopardy. Her parents, almost all of her siblings she extracted from the job of slavery. Host liberating her elderly parents is a way that is remarkable. They lived out the rest of their lives together and went through so much as well. The parents and their story, to make it real at the end, you do a Little Something of what it might look like but if she is remembered in that way, the recent movie and i know you were a part of that. This last photograph this is the one we had never seen and it shows her at the time to see her dressed well, proud, strong, you say this is a person that has done so many things. Guest when that shows, in some ways rescue and then share with the public, that is an image most of us prior, that is an image we are not accustomed to. We are accustomed to the elderly hands clasped, shoulders hunched. If this is a woman in this photo was taken sometime in the late 60s o so after the war, but the word o that comes to mind is fierce about the business and in every way but also