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Sparkle (0)
by Karen Jones Meadows
As a child I learned of Harriet Tubman, icon of the anti-enslavement movement, and the most celebrated “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, a network of diverse citizens in the U.S. and abroad who ushered enslaved people to safe states and countries. I had no idea Harriet Tubman would become an intricate and intimate fixture in my world, leading, sometimes dragging me, into successive levels of life and creativity.
My first adult encounter with Harriet was when I was commissioned to create a series of one-woman performances entitled, A Living Portrait of Black History. I chose to embody Queen Nzinga, Lorraine Hansberry, Phillis Wheatley and Harriet Tubman through extemporaneous monologues followed by in-character Q&A sessions. Audiences from kindergarteners to avid theater goers were dazzled by Queen Nzinga’s Angolan accent, tales of fighting the Portuguese and regal defiant presence; Lorraine Hansberry’s fiery socio-political opinions and undercurrent of vulnerability left people thinking abstractly; but it was Harriet Tubman who became the most requested.
She ignored my well-researched information and complex characterization—men’s trousers tied with ragged cloth, plaid shirt, a hat pulled over her scar, carrying a stick I’d carefully chosen—and say and do whatever she wanted, like; I visits dem other womens. Phillis Wheatley good wit dem poetry words but didn’ have no common sense, which is how she end up dead froze ta death on Queen Street in Boston. If I’d been alive when she was, I woulda— This would be about the time I’d freak out, not knowing how “we” were going to get out of this diatribe she’d started. Somehow we always did, in a perfectly logical and theatrically meaningful way.
I soon set out to launch my playwriting career minus Harriet and the others. My first New York production, Henrietta, was a success by most accounts, and I was feeling on-my-way in my red hat, wandering up Madison Avenue somewhere between the 50s and 60s when a well dressed executive-looking white man approached and asked, “Do you know anything about Harriet Tubman?”
Odd, but okay. I’ll share. As we walked, I told him things, such as, Harriet’s real name, Araminta, as was her mother’s, and that people called her Minty when she young. As a pre-teen, her skull was crushed by a man who hit her with a weight for attempting to assist someone escaping. She heard voices all her life, some attributing it to the brain injury, some not. I’m sure I told him that her romances intrigued me and I wanted people to know about them because they counter the usual stoic, hardened looking pictures of Harriet, when in fact the reason she didn’t smile was because her teeth embarrassed her, which I learned from her great-grandniece.
Man I ain’t nevah seed befo’ come walkin’ round de edge o’ de plantation. I ain’t seed no black man walk like dat. His att’tude de mos’ finess’ o’ anybody I know. Rachel, were plantin’ flowers, an’ me pullin’ weeds. She see me lookin’ at him, say, “He free, he don’ want you.” He come up close now, 'cause we werkin’ near de paff by de fence. I draws mysef up, smiles, an’ waves my weeds while I laughs, lack I seed de slaveholda womens do wit dey hank’chiefs ta show dey fineness…Don’ nevah im’tate somebody, 'cause ya jes’ come out lookin’ lack a fool...
After another New York play, Tapman, with many excellent reviews and one devastating one that almost made me stop writing, I secured work with McMillan-McGraw Hill, creating CDs to teach children an appreciation for global music. How could an obscure Harriet Tubman opera for me to condense into seven minutes come into this picture? Had to be Harriet. Persistent... Relentless...Resourceful...Never going to leave me alone...Harriet. She even had the head of a writing workshop where I gave occasional classes suggest I write a one-woman play about “guess who” and perform it in New York.
Did no one understand that I actually had a life plan and being the incarnate of Harriet Tubman wasn’t in it? Admiration is one thing; submission, another.
Then Harriet went into the no-fair zone. Ron Milner, great playwright and friend, asked me to write a children’s version of Harriet Tubman for his theatre’s youth outreach program. He repeatedly emphasized that it was for our starved-for-truth children, and he even had some commission money. Did I mention Harriet loved children?
When I had performed in schools, upon seeing “Harriet,” the African-descended youth first had horror on
