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March 10
Harriet Tubman, Hallie Quinn Brown, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
David Barnhart
March 10, 2025
Pinhole photo of Trinity United Methodist Church during Lent, Birmingham, 2009.
Today is the feast day of Harriet Tubman, who died on this day in 1913. Nicknamed “Grandma Moses,” she was a nurse, spy, activist, and liberator who established the “Underground Railroad” and facilitated the escape of at least 70 people from slavery.
Today is also the birthday of Hallie Quinn Brown, a gifted teacher, speaker, and advocate for African-American women. She was a graduate from Wilberforce University (which I mentioned the other day). She was also a leader in the AME church and suffragist. She also helped raise awareness of convict leasing as an extension of slavery, which is still in practice today. She preached the importance of educating and raising up Black women into leadership, and saw her own celebrity as a vehicle for community empowerment — much the way powerful leaders to today.
Today also marks the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, ending the Mexican-American War. This was a war of aggression of the United States against Mexico, and the treaty annexed over half of Mexican territories, including California (which is now the 5th largest economy in the world.). Additionally, millions of indigenous people were forced or fled into Mexico. Today, when their descendents enter the United States, our white supremacist media and government calls them “illegal aliens.”
Reflection:
At an AME Conference in South Carolina in 1889, she Hallie Brown said,
At my home I have two pictures representing the Rock of Ages; one represents a plain cross, without any flowers or adornments, upon the solid rock in the midst of a tumultuous sea. The waves run mountain-high, threatening to engulf the rock and cross. To that cross clings a woman. She has both arms thrown around the cross. She is saved. But I turn to the other and see that the woman has gone up on the rock. She throws one arm around the cross, and with the other she reaches down and lifts up a fallen soul up to the rock upon which she stands.
She also said,
There are many wives who are now helping to educate their husbands at school, by taking in sewing and washing. Now that is all right, if when he gets through with his schooling he would work to send his wife to an institution of learning. I believe in equalizing the matter. Instead of going to school a whole year, he ought to stay at home one half, and send his wife the other six months.
Prayer: God of Wisdom and Liberation, you have shown us that the liberation of one of us is intertwined with the liberation of all of us. All beings seek freedom. Help us to live out this solidarity so that we can all be free. Amen.