Mysterious Young Harriet Tubman Photo Discovered in Forgotten Abolitionist’s Album Sparks New Historical Revelations
The portrait shows a youthful-looking Tubman with her black hair held back in a tight bun. She dons a long-sleeve button-down with accents of ruffles in the middle and a gingham pattern frock that drapes all the way to the floor, subsequently hiding her feet. Tubman’s expression is straight and hardened while her right arm is rested on the back of the chair on which she sits.
Library of CongressThe portrait of Harriet Tubman, estimated to be in her 40s. The photograph was found in an album owned by abolitionist Emily Howland.
The portrait is powerful. Not only because it is an image of one of the most revered African-American activists in the country’s history, but also because the vintage photograph is the only known portrait of Tubman in her younger years.
“Just to see her younger is really great because we’re so used to seeing the older photos of her after she’s already made her way back and forth,” Deborah Brice, a living descendant of Harriet Tubman, told DCist. “She’s a young woman and that’s what I see in the photo: a young woman who still has that hope.”
Bunch added that “there’s a stylishness about her. And you would have never had me say to somebody ‘Harriet Tubman is stylish.’”
The Smithsonian museum partnered up with the Library of Congress to gather funds and acquire the photograph from Swann Auction Galleries of New York.
Bunch, whose expertise covers 19th Century History, explained that Tubman’s attire signified that of a middle-class black woman. Tubman successfully made a living working for the Union government as a spy and received a pension for her services. She also ran a small farm of her own and sometimes received donations from abolitionists who supported her work.
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