Harriet Tubman Day 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, as we celebrate the history and contributions of women this month, I rise today to commemorate the legacy of one of our Nation's--and my beloved State of Maryland's--most iconic figures, Harriet Tubman.

Congress began officially recognizing March 10 as Harriet Tubman Day in 1990, and I am always grateful to speak to her accomplishments. Throughout her life, she served as an abolitionist, solider, spy, and most famously, as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

I would like to reflect on her contributions to human rights, civil rights, and women's rights in our Nation and to renew my commitment to addressing the shameful legacy of slavery in Maryland and across the U.S.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross to enslaved parents in Bucktown, MD, in 1822. After emancipating herself, she dedicated her life to the advancement of freedom and the fight against slavery. Araminta adopted the name ``Harriet'' at the time of her marriage to John Tubman, a free Black man, around the year 1844.

Tubman and her husband continued to live in Dorchester County until her escape from slavery in 1849, at the age of 27. She would courageously return to make over 13 dangerous trips to lead nearly 70 enslaved people seeking freedom, repeatedly risking her life in pursuit of our Nation's highest aspirational ideal.

Tubman became known as the ``Moses of her people'' by African- Americans and White abolitionists. She was perhaps the most famous and most important conductor in the network of resistance known as the Underground Railroad.

Harriet Tubman's legacy extends past the Underground Railroad.

During the Civil War, Harriet Tubman served the Union Army, tending to wounded soldiers as a nurse and scouting into Confederate territory as a spy. She helped orchestrate the Combahee River raid in South Carolina that freed over 700 enslaved men, women, and children. After the war's end, Harriet focused her efforts on women's suffrage. In 1896, she was one of the first guest speakers for the National Association of Colored Women. She also established one of the first incorporated homes for aged African-Americans. In 1903, she bequeathed the home to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Auburn, NY.

Harriet Tubman made an indelible impact on my State and our Nation's history, and I am proud to have played a role in memorializing her story to future generations. I worked to secure the authorities and funding for the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, which tells the story of her life in Dorchester and Caroline Counties, and for the Harriet Tubman Underground National Historical Park.

The National Park Service administers the national historical park created by Congress in December 2014 and the national monument authorized by President Obama in 2013 as a single unit and works in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and the State of Maryland, which owns and comanages the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, to commemorate and interpret Tubman's remarkable story. Visitors can access the marshlands, largely preserved since her time, at the visitor center and nearby refuge.

This year commemorates the seventh anniversary of the opening of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, which welcomed its first visitors in 2017. In its inaugural year, it surpassed expectations by attracting nearly 100,000 visitors from across the United States and over 70 countries. Within the visitor center, visitors encounter exhibits recounting Tubman's remarkable journey, set amidst landscapes and waterways meticulously preserved to reflect the environment she experienced over two centuries ago as an enslaved child, young woman, and seeker of freedom. The visitor center serves as an orientation hub to the national monument and historical park and an entry point to the expansive Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway.

Along this route lie significant sites such as the Brodess Farm, where Tubman spent her childhood, the Bucktown General Store, where she defiantly resisted her captors as a young girl, and various other locations integral to the Underground Railroad in Dorchester, Talbot, and Caroline Counties.

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park centers her life's work not in physical structures, but instead through the landscape in Tubman's native Dorchester County, which we must defend against the social and ecological hazards of climate change. While climate change is a global issue, it is felt on a local scale. Dorchester County's low-lying landscape of tidal marshes, narrow peninsulas, and country roads linking isolated communities is threatened by sea level rise and land subsidence.

Over half of the county lies in the 100-year floodplain, much of it in the tidal floodplain; even minor storms and routine high-tide events can flood vast portions of the county. In addition to flooding, saltwater intrusion threatens the failure of rural septic systems and damage to roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

Climate-driven changes to the coastal ecosystem are also making it harder to earn a living through the primary local sources of income: agriculture, forestry, and the seafood industry. Local communities are at the frontline of adaptation, and initial social inequality causes the disadvantaged groups in those communities to suffer disproportionately from the adverse effects of climate change, resulting in greater subsequent inequality. Dorchester County is no exception. After the Civil War, freedmen and women settled the land, which was often less arable and, therefore, more affordable. Today, the county has a population of 32,000, 26 percent of whom are Black. Black individuals are almost twice as likely to be unemployed or live below the Federal poverty level as their White neighbors, attributable to systemic racism that has roots in Harriet Tubman's time of enslavement.

The Union of Concerned Scientists developed a Climate Equity Tool to identify communities that face conditions that heighten their vulnerability to harm and are therefore high-risk environmental justice areas, including Dorchester County. UCS projects that the county will see a 6-inch rise in sea level by 2030 and 13-inch rise by 2045.

Cities and towns on the Eastern Shore and around the world have been focusing on solving their climate problems. They are working to build flood defenses, plan for heatwaves and higher temperatures, install water-permeable pavements to better deal with floods and stormwater, and improve water storage and use. Dorchester County has a flood mitigation plan that identifies projects to protect resources at risk of being lost, including historic and cultural sites. However, implementation of such plans requires significant funding.

It is essential that Congress enhances the resilience of vulnerable communities in Dorchester County and across the Eastern Shore--and the Nation--whose residents have been forced to manage periodic flooding and other climate impacts in relative social and political isolation.

Frontline communities in Dorchester and neighboring Eastern Shore counties with strong historical and cultural ties require sufficient Federal financial and technical assistance now to help plan for the future and make choices about how best to protect themselves from tidal flooding, saltwater intrusion, and coastal disasters. Environmental justice is an essential component to carry on the anti-racist work that Harriet Tubman pioneered. The Inflation Reduction Act includes over $125 million in debt relief and assistance to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers who have faced disproportionate impacts from the pandemic as a result of longstanding discrimination. These provisions present only a small down payment on the types investments needed to address inequality and have yet to squarely address climate change.

The local communities on the Eastern Shore that served as Harriet Tubman's training ground in resistance are rarely credited for their outsized influence on Maryland's maritime industry, culture, and environment. We must do better to enshrine their place in our historical consciousness and provide their local communities with the tools necessary to prepare for climate change.

I am grateful for the opportunity to showcase the exceptional efforts of one particular Marylander and honor her by pursuing climate and environmental justice policies. Harriet Tubman held steadfast to her convictions, daring to envision a nation where freedom was truly universal. Her unwavering bravery led her to risk her life for the betterment of our Nation. Her courage, conviction, and determination serve as a profound source of inspiration for us all.

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