Swing Low: Harriet Tubman Memorial, New York City
Introduction
In 2001, New York City Council members proposed and later approved the renaming of a prominent intersection in Harlem to Harriet Tubman Square/Triangle, formed at the intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard at West 122nd Street. In 2003, the well-known California-based artist Alison Saar received the commission to create a monument to Harriet Tubman, which she named Swing Low: Harriet Tubman Memorial, after the nineteenth-century spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
The “Record of Fugitives” at Columbia University Libraries documents that Harriet Tubman assisted freedom seekers to Sydney Howard Gay’s office in New York City. According to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia, “In 1855 and 1856, Gay, the editor of the weekly abolitionist publication, the National Anti-Slavery Standard and a key operative in the underground railroad in New York City, meticulously recorded the arrival of fugitive slaves at his office. . . . Gay interviewed the fugitives, who numbered well over two hundred men, women, and children and recorded their stories.”[1]
On May 14, 1856, Gay recorded that Tubman brought a party of four men to his offices from Philadelphia including Ben Jackson, Jas. Coleman, Wm. A. Conoway (aka Cook), and Henry Hopkins from Dorchester County, Maryland. Calling her “Captain Harriet Tubman,” Gay documented in detail Tubman’s story of escape from Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the persons she had assisted to freedom. This is an important archival source as it provides evidence of Tubman’s work on the Underground Railroad, and the network of men and women who assisted her.[2]
New York City’s connection to Tubman runs deep because of this history and the lore of Tubman moving through the city with fugitive slaves. In 2001, former Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields issued a call for proposals to hire an architect and sculptor for the $2.8 million Tubman memorial project to expand and landscape the traffic island and locate a significant memorial in the space.[3]
References
[1]“The Record of Fugitives,” Book 1 (1855) and Book 2 (1856), Sydney Howard Gay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries, Columbia University, New York, New York. Accessed April 5, 2018. https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/fugitives/record_fugitives.
[2]“The Record of Fugitives,” Book 2, page 8-13, 1856. Sydney Howard Gay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries, Columbia University, New York, New York, accessed April 5, 2018, https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/fugitives/record_fugitives. See also Kate Clifford Larson, “Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad,” Harriet Tubman Biography, accessed April 5, 2018, http://www.harriettubmanbiography.com/TubmansUGRR.html.
[3]J. Zamgba Brown, “Harriet Tubman’s Legacy Gets Square Deal,” New York Amsterdam News, March 15, 2001, page 10, and Frank Lombardi, “Harriet Tubman Sq. Plan Goes To Council,” NY Daily News, March 14, 2001, accessed April 5, 2018, http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/boroughs/harriet-tubman-sq-plan-council-article-1.910128.