She was illiterate – but that didn’t hinder her!
Like almost all slave children, young Harriet (or ‘Minty’ as she was known during her early years) received no formal education. She was too busy working to study, and even if she had free time, there were no schools for slave children. As such, she never learned to read and write. Any education she did get, she received from her mother reading her bible stories.
Tubman’s lack of literary skills didn’t stop her in her heroic work. While she couldn’t communicate with escaping slaves or other fellow freedom fighters through letters, she did have one key advantage: she would often sing to the fleeing slaves, using slang and dialect that no white people could hope to understand.
What’s more, according to legend, Tubman’s illiteracy also saved her from being captured. The tale goes that she was travelling by train one time when she one of her former masters boarded. Fearing she would be recognized and reported, she grabbed a newspaper. She started to pretend to read and hoped for the best. The ploy worked – the white slaveowner had seen her ‘Wanted’ poster. It stated on here that Tubman, an escaped slave, was illiterate. Amazingly, the ploy worked. The slaveowner and his companions simply ignored the woman with the newspaper and Tubman remained free to carry on her secret work.