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- No. In conducting our Harriet fact check, we learned that the freeborn northern black, Marie Buchanon, portrayed by Janelle Monáe, is not based a real-life individual.
www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/harriet/How Accurate is Harriet? Movie vs. True Story of Harriet Tubman
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Dec 23, 2019 · 'Harriet' follows Harriet Tubman as she escapes slavery and goes on to lead the Underground Railroad. How accurate are the characters to real life?
Nov 25, 2023 · In real life, Janelle Monáe's character is a fictional one. William Still, though, was a real-life figure who played a pivotal role in the Underground Railroad, working together with...
- Kasi Lemmons
- Author
Oct 30, 2019 · Catherine Clinton, author of the 2004 biography Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, tells the New York Times she has even encountered people “who were not sure if [Tubman] was even a real...
- Meilan Solly
- Tubman’s Early Life as Araminta “Minty” Ross
- Tubman’s “Spells”
- Harriet’s Escape
- Gideon Brodess
- William Still
- Marie Buchanon
- “Moses”
- Bigger Long
- The Fugitive Slave Act
- The Combahee River Raid
Just as in the movie, Tubman (played here by Cynthia Erivo) grew up on a farm in Dorchester County, Maryland, where she was born Araminta “Minty” Ross. Though the movie may leave the impression that she only took on the name Harriet Tubman when she reached freedom, she seems to have taken it when she was married, taking Harriet from her mother, Har...
In the movie’s first scene, Tubman experiences one of her “spells,” which often cause her to lose consciousness and seem to give her visions of nearby dangers or events to come. (In an interview with Slate, Lemmons described the “spells” as Tubman’s “Spidey sense.”) As in the movie, Tubman believed that the visions she experienced were messages fro...
In the movie, as in real life, Harriet’s journey to freedom is kicked into high gear upon the death of her master, Edward Brodess. Brodess’ son Gideon (played in the movie by Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Joe Alwyn) had caught Minty praying for the death of his father after he refused to set her free. Tight on cash and unnerved by her seemingly prophet...
Though the Brodesses did have a son, his name was Jonathan, and little is known about him. As those facts suggest, just about everything in the movie that involves this character and his dogged, years-long pursuit of Tubman, up to and including a final standoff in the woods, was invented for the movie.
One of the first people Harriet meets in Philadelphia is the black abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor William Still. He helps her get settled in the city and eventually inducts Harriet as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Just as in the movie, William Still really did keep meticulous records of all the people who managed to esca...
The character of Marie Buchanon—a free black woman and successful business owner who takes Tubman in and teaches her how to live as a free woman—is invented for the movie. However, that’s not to say someone like Buchanon couldn’t have existed.
In the movie, Harriet’s first trip back south comes a year after her escape, and it’s to rescue her husband, John. Though he was a free man, his freedom as a black man in the South was exceptionally restricted by the whims of white people, as evidenced by the fact that Edward Brodess could keep him from seeing his wife. But upon returning to Dorche...
Upon noticing the escape of Harriet’s brothers, the vengeful Gideon hires Bigger Long, a slave catcher who is rumored to be the best in the area. To his (and my) surprise, Long is a black man. There’s no evidence that the Brodesses hired a slave catcher, but according to a few historians whom I reached out to, it’s not entirely impossible that such...
In the movie, Harriet manages several rescue missions, and her reputation as a conductor on the Underground Railroad is well established by the time that the Fugitive Slave Act passes. In reality, the law—which not only made it legal for runaways to be captured and returned to the South but effectively conscripted bystanders into aiding the capture...
At the very end of the movie, we see Harriet two years into the Civil War, giving a speech to a battalion of black soldiers in a prelude to the Combahee River Raid, where she led a group of 150 soldiers in an expedition to destroy Confederate supply lines and rescue about 750 fugitive slaves. In a postscript, we’re told that not only was she the fi...
- Rachelle Hampton
Oct 23, 2019 · When the author and historian Catherine Clinton was writing the biography “Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom” (2004), she said, “ I encountered people who were not sure if she was even a...
Nov 22, 2023 · The slave catcher in Harriet, Bigger Long (Omar Dorsey) was not a real person in history, though the character represented the Black slave catchers who did exist in the 19th century South.
