Harriet Tubman: A Disabled American Hero
The New Haven Museum (NHM) will celebrate CT Freedom Trail Month with an event focusing on American abolitionist and social activist Harriet Tubman on Thursday, September 18, 2025, at 6 p.m. Following her escape from slavery in 1849, Tubman helped numerous others escape via the “Underground Railroad.” During the Civil War, she worked as an armed scout and spy for the Union army. She was later an activist for women’s suffrage.
Deirdre Cooper Owens, an associate professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Connecticut, will offer a lecture entitled, “Harriet Tubman: A Disabled American Hero,” on Thursday, September 18 , 2025, at 6 p.m., preceded by a reception at 5:30 p.m. Register for this free NH250 event here.
Cooper will discuss the life of Harriet Tubman through the lens of disability. She will explore how Tubman lived in a world of challenges and overcame difficult obstacles, most importantly, her enslavement. “Although there are numerous biographies about Harriet Tubman’s life, none of them delve into her disabilities and how her conditions impacted her decision-making and life,” Cooper says.
In her presentation, Cooper will underscore how Tubman’s sleeping fits, narcolepsy, and fantastical hallucinations affected those around her. She will also examine how Tubman’s community members considered (and reconsidered) how to treat a Black woman who achieved prominence while wearing the markers of 19th century inferiority: blackness, enslavement, femaleness, and disability.