I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.
ATTRIBUTION:
Harriet Tubman (1821–1913), African American slave, liberator of slaves, and spy. As quoted in Divided Houses, ch. 7, by Lyde Cullen Sizer (1992).
Of her experience as slave-liberator via the secret network of way-stations known metaphorically as the Underground Railroad. Following her own escape from her Maryland slavemaster, Tubman returned to the South nineteen times to usher other slaves out of bondage; she freed 300-400 people.
