Harriet Tubman Lives, part 1
Now, if you’ve been reading this series of articles, you might think track #12 on handmade, “Harriet Tubman Lives,” belongs in a different part of the album. After all, tracks 6, 7, and 8 were about my heroes, people I looked up to: James Blish (”City in Flight“), Neil Gaiman (”Night’s Bridge“), and the Kraffts (”Volcanology“).
Harriet Tubman is beyond that, no mere hero.
You may have noticed my thoughts tend to run toward the grim. There are times when my purpose in life seems to be chief prosecutor for the crimes of humanity.
I have a very vivid, long memory. For some reason, the stories that stick with me the longest are the atrocities. When I hear of something horrible some human being has done, something inside me nods its head in confirmation; it is justification of the low opinion I have of the species.
My wife knows this, because if we are planning on going somewhere, I can rattle off every crime or horror related to that event, place, people, or time period like some sort of Encyclopedia for Damned Things. Well, you know, being Creek, that comes easy to me. There’s no Holocaust Museum for my people. Instead, there’s John Wayne movies, Cowboys vs. Indians, and a bunch of white folks running around every time I talk about my heritage saying they’re descended from the ever-popular Cherokee princess.
Now, there are two things that keep me from descending down the ladder of despair into this pit of my own devising. They are:
- Music. To me, the only thing that separates human beings from animals is our capacity to create and recognize beauty.
- My Saints.
Ah, didn’t think I’d spring the religion card on you, eh? I don’t mean church saints; I mean my saints, people I regard as being so far beyond the standard human condition as to point the way to what we all could be. People who overcame that viciousness, that selfishness endemic to the human race and became more and greater.
People like Harriet Tubman. Not mere heroes, but the best examples of the potential of humanity.
When I get depressed from reading the newspaper or hearing the news on the radio, when my mind dwells on the daily horrors that are the chief export of the media — the thing I say to myself to reassure me that there is a future for humanity is “Harriet Tubman lives in my heart; Harriet Tubman lives inside us all.”
And there you have the first two lines of this song.
