Harriet Tubman Day Celebration Brings Legendary Abolitionists’ Relatives to BSU

 

MEDIA CONTACT: David Thompson, dlthompson@bowiestate.edu, 301-860-4311

(BOWIE, Md.) – Born as a slave and transformed into an abolitionist, Harriet Tubman cared about freedom and family and protected them at great personal risk, making herself an historic legend in the process. Her descendants hope to encourage Bowie State students to do the same by learning and educating others about Tubman’s brave and history-making endeavors during the Harriet Tubman Day Celebration at the University.

The free event sponsored by Miss Sophomore, Trinity Cephas, will be held Thursday, March 10, 6 – 7:30 p.m. in Student Center ballrooms B and C. Several descendants of Tubman, including a fourth-generation niece, Tonet Cuffee and a fourth-generation nephew, Anthony Ross, will share stories of their family history in a panel discussion open to questions from attendees. Those unable to attend the event in person may join an Instagram live stream by tuning in to @bowiestate24.

The event is the brainchild of Cephas. who originally hoped to have a month of weekly Women’s History Month activities, calling them Black Her Story as a nod to her being enrolled at an HBCU. But academic life for the social work major got busy, so she picked one woman, Harriet Tubman, to celebrate her life in the first HBCU in Maryland, where Tubman was born.

“There’s no actual better place to have this celebration,” she says.

Harriet Tubman’s birth name was Araminta Ross. She changed her name, according to PBS.org, because she had several relatives named Araminta. Harriet is her mother’s name. Around 1944, Harriet married a free black man, John Tubman, and took his last name.

She was born in Dorchester County, MD in 1822. According to PBS.org, “Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's ‘conductors.’ During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger."

She died March 10, 1913.

One county, one love of family, divided by 100 years of history

Cephas also grew up in Dorchester County and attended North Dorchester High School in Hurlock, MD. After her mother died of cancer, Cephas, who played high school basketball, went to stay with the family of the high school assistant basketball coach, Tonet Cuffee.

Cuffee explains her family has taken in other children, including family members.

“Once we take you in as family, you’re family for life,” she says.

“Trinity is an additional daughter,” she says, adding with a chuckle that Cuffee’s family is so big and spends so much time together Cephas probably needed a weekend away from them.

It was there that Cephas learned that Cuffee was a direct, albeit distant, relative of Harriet Tubman. When asked if Cuffee tried to keep it secret, Cephas says, “No, they’re just not loud about it.”

Cuffee hopes the event at Bowie State inspires attendees to educate their family member and others about the people who worked so hard for the freedoms they enjoy today.

“Harriet Tubman is Black royalty. We’re related. Everyone else has a story, too. They need to know what legacies and history they have. We’re trying to continue the togetherness that Harriet Tubman started.”

As Cuffee describes it, Harriet Tubman’s/Araminta Ross’s brother was Benjamin Ross. Benjamin had a son, David Ross, who in turn had a son, Owen Ross, who had a daughter Bernice Ross, who had Valerie, Cuffee’s mother.

So, if calculations are correct, that makes Cuffee a great, great, great, great niece of Harriet Tubman.

As the family lore goes, Cuffee’s great grandfather, Owen Ross, was a pastor who always talked about Moses. The relatives, particularly the young, would jumble all the family stories and names but they later came to know that the Moses to whom he referred was Harriet Tubman.

While her great grandfather passed away when she was five and Cuffee grew up hearing a rich medley of stories about her ancestors, she didn’t realize the magnitude of her connection to such an inspiring and brave woman. Some of her relatives, Patricia Hawkins and Jaqueline Walker-Henry, were very instrumental in lobbying for the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Church Creek, MD and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, NY. Hawkins, her aunt, was on hand when President Barack Obama in 2013 signed the Harriet Tubman -- Underground Railroad National Monument Presidential Proclamation.

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