"♪ ♪" "♪ ♪" "♪ Freedom ♪" "♪ Has it ever been free?" "♪" "♪ Freedom ♪" "♪ Is it gonna cost me?" "♪" "♪ I don't have nothin' left ♪" "♪ I don't have nothin' left to give ♪" "♪ I don't have nothin' left ♪" "♪ Lead me to the water ♪" "♪ To wash away the pain ♪" "♪ Broken sons and daughters ♪" "♪ Healing's on the way ♪" "♪ Oh... ♪" "♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪" "♪ That's the sound of the spirits ♪" "♪ In the wind ♪" "♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪" "♪ Blood spilled in the river of our innocence ♪" "♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪" "♪ But our roots are deeper than the hell we're in ♪" "♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪" "♪ You can't cage a spirit that is the wind ♪" "♪ Freedom ♪" "♪ Stolen chains for change. ♪" "(man coughs)" "Way each of us see the world be affected by two things what we know... and what we believe." "The first thing I knew was to be afraid of the white man." "To be terrified of them carrying' me away." "I had two sisters carried away in a chain gang." "Could barely walk when the first one, Mariah, was taken." "I was too young to understand how someone could just disappear." "But I wasn't too young to feel my momma's grief." "It's clawed at that emptiness as long as I can remember." "And that's shaped my fear of white men." "(man coughs quietly)" "And it ain't gone away in all my years." "So imagine how I must feel staring' out at all of y'all right now. (chuckles)" "(laughter)" "I grew up like a neglected weed." "Ignorant of liberty, havin' no experience of it." "Then I was not happy or contented." "And now I been free," "I know what a dreadful condition slavery is." "I imagine a lot of y'all done come across Uncle Tom's Cabin?" "I've heard it read, and I tell you," "Ms. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint what slavery is as I've seen it in the far South." "It's the next thing to hell." "If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him to hell, if he could." "But I suppose y'all share that sentiment." "That's why you're here." "We of like mind." "What y'all really came to hear is how I defied all the odds and escaped hell." "To tell you how I came to be free, first you got to understand" "what bondage was like for me." "How it attacks the senses." "The sound of it." "The crack of a whip like thunder." "The feel of it." "Like you could barely take a full breath." "The taste of it, like all your teeth made of copper." "The smell of it." "The fading' stench of everybody sold away." "And the look of it." "Every eye turned down to the ground, away from the horror." "There were nobody better at turning' an eye than the real Harriet, my momma." "She worked up in the house, and she was well-versed in the way of white folks." "How to judge they moods, how to move through they space like a spirit," "how to listen and remember secrets that might be of use later." "Her lessons would be helpful once I started movin' cargo, but in the meantime, I had no use for it." "The last place I wanted to be was workin' in the house." "But from the moment I could work, that's where I found myself." "I wasn't no taller than them chairs y'all sittin' in when Mr. Cooks came on his horse one mornin' and took me away." "My massa had hired me out to him and his wife." "And she was keen on teachin' me to weave for her." "Problem is my little hands just wouldn't take to that woman's lesson, no matter how hard she nagged." "And she nagged." ""Come on, little nig!" "Get that needle through!" ""Kick them legs out, you little nig!" "Work that loom!"" "She would give herself a headache, but I could never seem to manage it." "(chuckles)" "Some might say that was under my own design, but you'll never hear me say that." "(laughter)" "Soon enough, the mistress got tired of tryin' to teach me, and Mr. Cooks tasked me with checkin' the muskrat traps." " (man groans)" " Mm, that's right, somebody know how terrible a job that be." "But I was workin' under God's roof, and that's... that's what I preferred." "My body had other preferences." "I got real sick moving' through them swamps." "Sick enough that Mr. Cooks sent me back home after my momma done complain to massa that I be dead without no lookin' after." "And a dead slave ain't worth nothin'." "I remember thinkin' then that my momma had won." "That maybe that victory, no matter how small," "was freedom." "I was soon reminded... and I constantly would be... that there ain't no such thing as triumph under the conditions of slavery." "Just respite." "Black folk, we know pain." "Known it a long time." "I got more scars on my body than I can count." "Miss Susan, the next woman I was hired out to, she gave me a lot of 'em." "The first day, she told me to dust and sweep the great room." "No instruction." "She just pushed the broom in my hand and left me to work." "And when she returned, she wasn't happy with what she saw, so she took a rawhide and..." "She had me come at it again." "No word 'bout what I done wrong." "I tried my best to collect every piece of dust." "Even had that thing in my hand, dusting my own blood." "But when she returned..." "I took up that broom once more... and then again... (pounding podium)" "I never cried out once." "I wouldn't give Miss Susan the satisfaction." "That's how I learned to love the pain." "Every time I got hit," "I took it as an opportunity." "For defiance." "To not give anyone the reaction they expected." "And then I thought, again, maybe that there was freedom." "But I couldn't reconcile why somethin' everybody held so precious come from pain." "There had to be an easier way to it than that." "One mornin'," "Miss Susan and her husband got into a ugly screamin' match." "While they scream and scream, I just wait." "My eyes glued on a bowl on the table." "You know what was in it?" "Lumps of pure white sugar." "(laughter)" "When the mistress' back was turned," "I move real slow." "Reached my hand right into that sugar bowl." "Took just one lump." "And that old bat must've heard me, 'cause she had the rawhide down, comin' at me like a storm, but I gave one jump out that door, and I flew!" "I ran, and I ran." "Sugar melting' on my tongue." "Nothin' ain't taste so good in my life." "I ran." "I ain't know where I was goin'." "I ain't had nowhere to go, but it didn't matter in that moment." "'Cause I had just stolen what joy I could, and that, that, that felt like freedom!" "If you'd asked anybody about little Minty... that's what they called me back then... they'd have told you." "I was the most rebellious thing." "Mischievous, too." "And I took pride in that." "Knowin' they ain't own me in spirit." "And maybe that's how I ought to have ended up, finding' freedom on the edges," "were it not for that one thing." "See, there be things that happen in your life." "If you're lucky, maybe only one thing." "Somethin' that splits your life in two." "A before and a after." "I'm sure most of y'all done heard this scar got somethin' to do with my spells." "How it is I just nod off in the middle of a sentence and start right back up again." "(laughter)" "I done heard all the stories about how I came about it." "That I fell 50 feet off a cliff 'fore I climbed my way back up." "That I took a bullet from a catcher on the outskirts of a Kentucky farm." "That I fought off six men, armed with hammers, to a standstill." "(laughter)" "Truth be told..." "I was worried about my hair." "(laughter)" "It's the truth." "It wasn't never combed." "Stood out like a bushel basket." "It was so bad, I would take the grease on my fingers after dinner and wipe it across my forehead, tryin' to tame the wildness." "(chuckles softly)" "That's what I remember most about that day." "I was fussing' with my hair in the front window of the store, too ashamed to go in lookin' like I did, when out of nowhere," "I see a white man chasing' after one of his rebellious slaves." "And I see his massa raise his hand to throw a heavy iron weight at that slave, and..." "I don't remember anything after that." "(chuckles softly)" "They told me it struck me in my head." "That's when my "after" started." "In my spells, my spirit would go traveling'," "flying' to distant lands." "And I heard a voice of someone speakin' in the language of the old prophets in its grand flow." "And I didn't understand it at first." "I didn't know what to make of it." "But then I came to understand it was the voice of Him." "The bringer of all good things." "He was showin' me what was possible." "I thought all my little acts of defiance added up to somethin', but they ain't." "And all them people callin' me a rebel was just as lost as I was." "There ain't no negotiations on freedom." "I was spendin' all my time knowing' things instead of believing' them." "And that's the first step to truly being free." "When you can see past all the things that you know and believe in somethin' better." "It ain't easy." "But that's the work that must be done." "I was finally on my way to bein' what everybody accused me of." "I was ready to be a rebel." "Funny thing is, just 'cause you believe somethin' don't mean anybody else ready to." "What my scar look like to you?" "A bird?" "That's what I always thought, too." "And after that day in the store, during' my spells," "I would always be dreamin' 'bout flying'." "Way up high." "So high I could almost touch the sun." "Just soaring' over fields and-and towns and rivers and mountains." "I believed I was supposed to be as free as a bird." "But I still knew I wasn't." "I'd gotten a small measure of it by convincing' my massa to let me hire myself out." "Find my own work on my own time." "My daddy was a timber inspector." "And like old Sojourner," "I could work just as hard as any man." "Even found myself one to marry." "John Tubman." "All that gave me some small comfort for some time, till I fell sick one winter, which I sometimes do." "And when Massa Stewart got word, he started lookin' to sell me, as he sometimes do." "So from Christmas till March, I worked as I could, and I prayed through all the long nights." "I groaned and I prayed for ol' massa." ""Oh, Lord," ""convert massa." ""Oh, Lord, change that man's heart."" "I prayed all day and night for a heart in my massa, until the first of March." "And all that time, you know what he was doin'?" "He was still tryin' to sell me." "So I changed my prayer." ""Oh, Lord, if you ain't never gonna change that man's heart, then kill him, Lord, and take him out the way."" "(quiet murmuring)" "Not a week passed, and massa was dead." "Died just like he lived, an old bad and wicked man." "I'd give all the world full of gold, if I had it, to bring that poor soul back." "I would." "But I could pray for him no longer." "'Cause I knew then that the Lord wasn't just speakin' to me," "He was listenin'." "This be a conversation." "And I knew he was prepared to give me anything I needed, and I ain't want to waste it, not on no man who ain't deserve it or on myself, 'cause of the guilt weighing' my soul." "You have to be intentional with your aim, 'cause he will provide." "And from that moment on, I knew what my intention was." "I aimed to escape." "Now, I knew it wasn't gonna be easy." "The backwoods of Maryland be uneven and hard goin'." "And after massa's death, everybody was scared." "That's how it is in the South." "A white planter's death always comes with sells." "And since me and my brother was already lined up and massa's debts was bein' called in, the mistress was lookin' for somethin' easy." "So I believed we had to go then and now." "But what I say earlier?" "Just 'cause you believe somethin' don't mean anybody else ready to." "My brothers had their doubts." "So I convinced 'em to run." "That was my first mistake." "It was a Saturday night." "Ain't nobody be watchin' you on His day." "You could get a good head start." "But the moon was shinin' bright that night." "With our long shadows, looked like eight of us was runnin' 'stead of four." "We ain't gone but a mile, and them boys start arguing over which way to go." "One say this way, the other say that way." "And next thing I knew, them boys was talkin' 'bout turning' around." "Ain't but a mile, and they was ready to give up." "I meant to keep on, but they dragged me back." "And that was the last time I convinced anybody to run." "That freedom fire, that ain't somethin' that can be stoked in someone else." "And embers ain't enough." "I seen a wildfire once when I was younger." "I stood right at the edge of it with my daddy." "I stared at it for a long time, and still I barely got the words to describe it." "The heat, the hum of activity, the relentless power of them flames consumin' everything in its path." "That's how you got to burn for freedom... wild-like, ready to scorch any doubt in your path." "'Cause that's what it's gonna take." "My brothers didn't have it, not yet, but I did." "And wasn't nobody gonna stop me at that point." "This time, I was gonna go at it alone." "Well, that-that ain't exactly true." "I-I spoke to Miss Leverton." "Her husband owned the mill nearby, and they were known abolitionists." "I asked for her help, and she gave me directions to the first safe house on my journey." "But that first step off the plantation that'd just be me." "I walked out into the unknown, heading to a place I'd only heard about in stories:" "Pennsylvania." "I wish I could say nothing's harder than that first step, but... all of them be hard." "I made my way along creek beds, picking' waterways over roads, following' the North Star when I could see it, taking help all along the way whenever it was given." "I got through Maryland with ease," "Delaware with a little less." "I listened to the Lord's voice guiding' me, protecting' me from danger." "When it was near, it would always come... like a flutter in my heart." "I knew he wouldn't lead me astray." "And then, finally I crossed the line." "(voice breaking):" "I was in Pennsylvania." "I looked at my hands see if I was the same person." "There was such a glory over everything." "The sun come like gold through the trees and over the fields." "I felt like I was in heaven." "I had crossed the line." "I..." "I was free." "But there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom." "I was a stranger in a strange land." "My home, after all, was down in Maryland, 'cause my father and mother, brothers and sisters and friends was all there." "But I was free." "And they should be free." "I believe that." "I'd make a home in the North and bring 'em there, God helping' me." "Oh, I prayed then." "I said, "Lord," ""I'm-a hold steady on to you, and I know you'll see me through."" "I was goin' back." "By the time I did, the activity... the activity in the capital had shifted the ground from under us." "And nowhere was safe in these United States for me or mine." "Mr. Douglass could always speak on the Fugitive Slave Act, the Bloodhound Law, better than I could." "He'd say something like..." ""Your lawmakers from up high" ""have commanded all good citizens to engage" ""in this hellish sport where the fugitive slave is but game."" "Any of y'all know him, don't you dare tell Fred I did this." "(laughter)" "He'd chastise me at our next meetin'." ""There isn't anywhere safe in these United States" ""for the fugitive slave." ""The whole armory of Northern law has no shield for you." ""In fact, the point of its sword is at your neck."" "He right." "This law change everything." "Wasn't no more solid ground to stand on." "Not but a year after I escape." "A year." "Felt like longer." "I had a terrible ache where family should have been." "It felt like I had fallen into that empty space my momma's grief clawed at." "I took her name to keep her close and to become the woman that swept floors and cooked." "(chuckles)" "Housework, or domestic work as they call it here in the North," "I..." "I took it any way I could find it." "Can you believe that?" "I ran all the way North to become the very thing I ran so hard from as a child." "But that's the way of it..." "sometimes you got to circle back on it to see how different you be." "And it was different." "Knowin' I ain't had no rawhide on the mantle waiting' for me," "I swept and dusted with a glad heart and a willing' hand." "It be the first work where the reward be entirely my own." "Ain't no massa with an open hand to rob me of it." "But the most important thing was I had a purpose:" "to get my kin out of bondage." "By any means." "Ain't nothin' can't be endured when you got a purpose." "I'd dust every inch of the North if it'll help me rescue mine." "And that's what I set out to do." "In every hotel and home that would have me." "At the time," "I didn't know where to begin my pursuit to rescue my kin, but I knew I'd need money to pull it off." "And I'd need a plan." "My own escape was too impulsive." "It was a risk worth takin' when it was just my life, but it wouldn't stand when it come to others." "I'd need a route back." "And somewhere in the middle of a most hostile territory to hole up in while I got word to my kin somehow." "And all that's just the gettin' there." "'Member how I said earlier?" "He will provide?" "He will." "But you got to do your part." "So I began a pattern that I would repeat for many years after." "Workin', planning', and waitin' on the dark months." "December, January, February." "The nights are longer, and the chill got most huddled by the fire inside they homes." "That's the time when you can slip across state lines unseen." "And I'd acquainted myself with the black folks workin' the boatyard along the Delaware." "They kept me in contact with the eastern shore." "I'd need to know the coming and going if I was lookin' to come and go." "It was through a bondsman in that boatyard that I got word my niece Kessiah and her chillun were being set to be sold on the steps of the county courthouse." "I went to Baltimore straightaway so I could better communicate with Mr. Bowley." "That was Kessiah's husband." "Bein' a freeman, he could bid on the family at auction." "The day of the auction came." "I was 100 miles away in Baltimore." "Prayin'." "Waitin'." "The dread I felt that day was somethin' powerful." "Though that rescue was successful, and the one after that," "I knew I couldn't sit back anymore and pull strings from afar." "Too many things could go wrong." "I'd have to go all the way back." "That'd be the best chance." "And yes, I was scared." "But I started with this idea in my head." "There's two things I got a right to:" "death... or liberty." "One or the other I mean to have." "No one will take me back alive." "I shall fight for my liberty." "And when the time come for me to go, the Lord will let them kill me." "So I set about preparing' to head back for the first time." "To a place I'd call home as long as any of my kin still live there." "My singular aim:" "to bring my husband back." "I decided I'd take a boat down the Chesapeake, retracing' the route my niece's family had taken." "I'd holed up 'bout eight miles from Caroline County, where I'd lived with John." "Now, I wouldn't go to him." "I decided I'd send word with someone I could trust and let him know I'd come to take him North and wait for him to come to me." "That was the safest way I could figure it, and that way ain't failed me since." "There ain't much that surprises me these days." "But finding' out John had taken up with another woman in my absence that was hard." "Hearin' that they was livin' as man and wife in the same home we had." "Knowin' I'd come all that way for him, and he refused to come back with me." "(clears throat)" "I was hurt." "I was angry." "And jealous." "I wanted to run to his house... my house... and make all the trouble I could." "But how foolish it was just for temper to make mischief." "If he could do without me, I could do without him." "And just like that, he dropped from my heart." "But the Lord had a reason for that betrayal." "He was tryin' to show me somethin'." "That I was thinkin' too small." "While I was waitin' for John, some others heard that I was there, and they had come to me and asked me for my help." "See, I'd only been thinkin' about me and mine." "And that ain't good enough, not for him." "I had the means to help those who came to me." "And so help I would." "I led 11 souls to freedom that trip." "Didn't stop in Philadelphia, either." "Took 'em all the way to Canada West." "The North wasn't safe no more." "I couldn't trust my people with Uncle Sam." "The ground keep shifting' beneath us." "And so it was from then on." "I wasn't married to no one but the cause." "I'd make another trip South." "And another one." "Always alertin' other black folks to my presence by walkin' the back trails near the slave quarters, singin'." "♪ Go down ♪" "♪ Moses ♪" "♪ Way down in Egypt land ♪" "♪ Tell old pharaoh ♪" "♪ Let my people go ♪" "♪ Go down, Moses ♪" "(crowd clapping rhythmically)" "♪ Way down ♪" "♪ In Egypt land ♪" "♪ Tell old pharaoh ♪" "♪ Let my people go ♪" "♪ So Moses went to Egypt land ♪" "♪ Let my people go. ♪" "After folks heard that, word of where and when I was headin' North would spread quickly." "And I'd keep to it, no matter what." "If you ain't there, you was gon' be left behind." "And I had my gun with me so that anybody with me ain't turn back." "I done led countless souls in they flight to freedom." "Each one a testament of the path that he has shown me." "And in his own time, the giver of all good things give me what I want." "The kin whose love had been the only balm in my days of bondage be free now." "I done got what I wanted." "But maybe it ain't what I need." "I know the work I do, th-that a lot of us do in this room is important." "But I'm startin' to believe it ain't enough." "That first day at Miss Susan's, takin' a beatin' and keepin' at it," "she had me clean the parlor 'cause her sister was comin' to call." "Miss Emily was her name." "And when she saw me barely standing', welts all up my arm, neck and face, somethin' must have broke in her heart, just a little." "She took pity on me." "Told me what I was doin' wrong." "See, I'd sweep, then I'd dust right away." "Wasn't giving' no time for the dust to settle." "So all my hard work was comin' undone." "That's the way I been feelin' these days." "Can't get no sleep." "And it ain't just my momma's complainin' about the Canadian cold every night, either." "(laughter)" "When I do sleep there ain't no dreamin' of flying' no more." "My feet be firmly planted on the ground." "I'm always in a wilderness sort of place, with... all full of, full of rocks and-and bushes." "And up from behind one of them rocks, a serpent rises up." "It don't scare me." "I just be standin' there." "And as it rises higher and higher, its head becomes the head of a old man with a long white beard." "I ain't got no idea who this man is, but he be gazing' at me wishful-like, as if he got somethin' of grave importance to tell me." "But he just can't, he can't seem to form the words." "And then two more heads come out of his body." "And those be the faces of younger men." "I ain't know them, either." "And that old man's eyes hold steady onto me." "What he want from me?" "I don't know." "Then, out of nowhere, a crowd of men come out, and they rush the serpent, and they strike down the two younger heads and then the old man's." "And still, I-I'm just standin' there, watchin'." "That old snake man's gaze stay on me." "And it ain't like he lookin' at me." "He looking' through me." "I ain't know what this was foretelling'." "And I still ain't exactly sure." "But I got some small understanding' of it after a unexpected meetin' earlier this year in St. Catherine's." "A visitor come to my door." "And you know what I saw when I opened it?" "I saw an old man with a long white beard." "And a wishful look in his eye." "Like me, he had been known by many names." "The most fitting' I could see be "Captain Brown."" "(crowd murmuring)" "No doubt that you've heard of him and his exploits as a friend of the cause." "MAN:" "He's no friend." " He's a murderer." " The Captain is the future of this fight." "Mr. Brown and his methods are too extreme." "And his methods get results." "His methods give all of us a bad name." "Everyone, stop." "We're here to hear Harriet speak." "So let her speak." "It took me some time to line up my thoughts on the Captain." "Here was this white man, standin' before a room of black folks who had all been in bondage, tellin' us that he was ready to take up the cause of a race that was not his own." "He ain't know the crippling' grip of slavery." "He ain't know the intractable will of the slaveholders." "And everything I knew told me no white man would be willin' to risk his own blood for black folks' freedom." "But the Captain would, and he already had." "His son bled with Kansas." "Died in the Pottawatomie massacre." "So every time I thought on it, everything that confused me about him built my admiration for him." "I only know two other men ready to sacrifice their sons:" "the prophet Abraham and the one who done ordered that sacrifice." "The Captain spoke of the conspiracy of the slave power." "He shared my disdain for abolitionists who are unable to take direct action against it." "That thing I felt..." "that dust that wouldn't settle... he had it, too." "Except he had a name for it." "War." "(crowd murmurs)" "When he spoke it, he spoke it quiet, like a... a prayer." "And ain't that it?" "Ain't a prayer just a plea?" "A hope." "A desire to believe there's somethin' better on the other side of it." "And don't we all want better?" "War." "The more he said the word to me, the more sense it made." "Slavery ain't just a sin, it's a state of war." "Profitin' off the bodies of others." "Rapin' the bodies of others." "Killin' the bodies of others." "Those are all acts of war." "Been that way since the dawn of man." "And we ain't been callin' it that because there's a nationwide conspiracy workin' against us... a conspiracy, as the Captain called it, of slaveholders actively at war, workin' hard to make it seem the way of things." "They pass it on to their sons and daughters." "They strengthen it through government." "They justify it through religion, callin' it Christianity." "That ain't my Christianity." "Callin' it God's will." "That ain't my God." "Down South, they got men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, cradle-plunderers for church members." "It's the most blasphemous of frauds." "Mr. Douglass said that last part, and it's somethin' we all agree on." "The Captain is steadfast in his conviction." "And I have no doubt he's willin' to die for it." "I don't intend to die for the cause." "I will." "To give up oneself... that be vital." "It's the act of every saint and martyr." "John the Baptist." "Joan of Arc." "But Minty of Dorchester just don't have the same ring to it, does it?" "I want to live a long and full life." "I'm tired of livin' under the threat of death." "Violence with no cause is brutality." "That's the way of the slaveholder." "But beating' back against those trying' to kill you... that's hope." "That's prayer." "That's believin' you will live a long and full life." "War." "Trust me," "I don't want to go there either." "But it's where we be." "HARRIET:" "In the last year, by my estimation," "I done helped over 50 souls find their way North." "I know I'm doin' the Lord's work." "I know we is changin' lives." "But I also know the world ain't changing'." "I believe it's got to." "We all here 'cause we believe it's got to." "But we... all here... talkin' to each other." "Right now we ain't out there changing' it, are we?" "We here, in Philadelphia, this shining' city that I heard of from afar, that I thought might be heaven when I arrived," "where freedom rings like that bell." "But how many white folks rioted when the fugitive slaves moved too close?" "How many Yankees we pass in the streets every day in their suit jackets and petticoats made of the cotton that done bloodied the hands of half this country?" "We call ourselves abolitionists." "But we ain't abolished nothin'." "So much of our breath be spent arguing' over methods that it overshadows the purpose." "We speak of the cause with such fervor, yet we see no effect." "A passionate debate about action is important, but it should never be mistaken for action itself." "As we fight amongst ourselves on how to defeat the enemy, the enemy takes more ground in this war every day, from ballot boxes to breeding' farms, marching' in lockstep against us, while we bicker" "over what song our fife and bugle should play." "We make enemies of ourselves over of a deep fear of the real enemy, a fear borne of the daunting odds of us winning." "Yeah, winning this war is tough." "Tough, but not impossible." "I've witnessed firsthand the heroism and feats accomplished by our network of abolitionists in name of the cause." "Our numbers... our numbers have grown, as has the power of the Underground." "But we got a ways to go to meet what is required in this fight." "The work everybody in this room been doin' is good." "It's important." "But it ain't enough." "You may think it is." "You can think it is, 'cause you free." "Nothin' be expected of you." "And nothin' is to be gained for you and yours from the abolition of this wretched institution." "This line of thinkin', though it lightens your burdens, it can be akin to apathy." "I've felt it myself, bein' free in the North." "I can be guilty of similar thoughts." "Them runs down South can be hard on the body and the spirit, and I ain't gettin' no younger." "Neither are my parents, livin' with me now, needing' me to provide for them." "All I done?" "I believe it be enough." "I can believe it 'cause I'm free." "But Captain John's visit reminded me of somethin' I learned when I was that troublemakin' little girl." "There ain't no negotiations on freedom." "Big or small." "There ain't no compromises or no half measures that mean anything, not to those in bondage." "And not for any of us either." "'Cause a country built on bodies will always need more for the slaughter." "As long as slavery stands, ain't none of us, no matter hue, man or woman, be free." "And if you refuse to see the chains that we all wearin', then you livin' in a dream, and the rest of us are sufferin' in the real world 'cause of it." "I'm sure you all came here to hear the horrifying' stories of brutality and the triumphant tales of courage." "When Mr. Still asked me to speak, he told me all I needed to do was tell my story." "But my story ain't over." "And it ain't my own." "Our action, and our inactions," "changes the course of things... all us." "Me?" "I aim to continue to act." "And it seem to me Captain Brown's path be the only way left for me to travel." "I done talked a lot about what my momma taught me, but my daddy taught me a lot of lessons, too." "He showed me every which way to fell a tree, depending' on its lineage or condition." "He taught me there ain't no tree that could best a axe in the right hands, no matter how strong its trunk, no matter how long it's been there." "And he taught me about planting' seeds, too." "An acorn, hard as a rock when it fell, would be swallowed up by the ground, cracked open, in what may seem like a violent act of destruction." "But that be growth, too." "The acorn must come completely undone in order for new life to emerge." "And I admit, as I stand here at the start of a new path, lookin' forward..." "I'm feelin' somethin' like what my brothers must have felt all them years ago." "And I'm prayin' to him for that wildfire in me to burn away all doubt." "And if Captain Brown's prayer ain't yours if you don't have it in you to take up arms against the injustice," "then you got to pray another prayer." "And you got to walk in it with conviction." "He will provide, but you got to do your part." "You got to find what it means for you to be a soldier." "Beat back those that are tryin' to kill everything good and right in the world, and call it makin' it great again." "We can't afford to be just citizens in a time of war." "That'd be surrender." "That'd be givin' up our future and our souls." "Ain't nobody get to sit this one out, you hear me?"