Most of us enter Harriet Tubman's life when she was in her 30s, 40s, 50s.

And oftentimes we don't sort of think about how she came to be Harriet.

I'm Celeste Headley, and this is following Harriet.

You know, I think for people of my generation, people who grew up in the 1970s, we first met Harriet in a photo in the corner of a textbook.

She looked old. Her skin was stretched tight on her face, her mouth was pinched, her head was wrapped in a dark kerchief.

We read a couple paragraphs about how she freed herself from slavery and then became a conductor in the dark kerchief. We read a couple of paragraphs about how she freed herself from slavery

and then became a conductor in the Underground Railroad. She saved the lives of many other

people, guided them safely from slavery to freedom. That was it. That was the whole story we were

told. But Harriet Tubman was so much more than a small woman with a lantern in the woods.

She was a wife and mother, an entrepreneur, a soldier, spy, nurse, and an activist who fought for women's right to vote.

I can honestly say after working on this project, she's really one of the most incredible

and brave individuals I've ever sort of come across. That's Erica Armstrong Dunbar. She's a history

professor at Rutgers University, and she's got a new book coming out called

She Came to Slay, The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.

Erica says in the beginning, Harriet wasn't even Harriet.

She was Araminta, or Minty, as her family called her.

Her parents were Harriet Green and Ben Ross, and they were both enslaved on the eastern shore of Maryland.

They had at least nine children, and Araminta was in the middle, born sometime around 1822.

One of the things about enslavement was that the sale of slaves, the forced movement and migration always left enslaved families vulnerable.

And we see that happen for Harriet and Ben. At a certain point, they're separated, and Harriet

is forced to move with her children, including Araminta, to another farm, 10 miles away from her husband.

They would continue to see one another to remain connected, but they didn't live together.

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