Harriet Tubman is idolized by Blacks and others for her courage and bravery in helping others escape slavery.
Niagara Regional Police are searching for a vandal who smashed a bust of an iconic former slave who snuck dozens of Blacks into Canada to escape slavery through the Underground Railroad.
The bust of Harriet Tubman was pushed off a pedestal to the ground and broke into pieces last weekend at a St. Catharines church where she once worshipped.
ST. CATHARINES church where statue was smashed provided hope for some many fleeing slaves searching for a better life.
Police believe the incident occurred around 9 p.m. on October 10 when a man in the courtyard of British Methodist Episcopal Church, on Geneva Street, shoved the heavy statue. The incident was caught on the church security cameras.
“I’m heartbroken,” said Rochelle Bush, historian and trustee at the Salem Chapel BME Church told the St. Catharines Standard.
“We were trying to maintain the grounds, trying to have something to commemorate Harriet Tubman and now it’s no more. It’s gone. We have to replace it. I’m just shocked that anyone would do it.”
The stone bust of the famed Underground Railroad ‘conductor’ was unveiled at the church in September 2010 and was the focal point of a meditation garden.
The bust was sculpted and donated by artist Frank Rekrut, who spent months creating a likeness using a black and white photo. Other donors contributed to the work’s installation, benches and a pedestal.
Tubman was born in 1822 in Dorchester Country, Maryland and lived to be 91.
She is described as a U.S. abolitionist and political activist, who escaped slavery and made some 13 trips across the border at night to illegally sneak about 70 slaves into Canada, where they became free people.
She used a network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women’s suffrage.
As a slave, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate boss threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. It caused her severe injuries which she suffered for life.
These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.
Tubman is today idolized in the Black and wider communities for saving the lives of dozens of slaves by sneaking them to Canada by following the moon and stars in the middle of the night.