It's really easy to think about slavery as this monolithic experience that happened to 12 million

people 200 years ago, that we can kind of, oh, that was bad, it happened, it's over.

I don't really have to process that too much, right?

It's this thing that happened.

I can't really think about it too detailed.

How could you not want to examine the lives of enslaved people when you're examining history?

It doesn't make any sense to me.

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

In the last episode, we left Harriet's story hanging.

She was called to Fort Monroe to serve as grand matron of the hospital that treated

contraband, formerly enslaved people who'd escaped to freedom.

But when she arrived, she was quickly put to work

cooking and doing laundry. She stayed for just a couple of months and there's no official record

of any additional work with the Union Army after that. We know she's settled into a quieter life

in Auburn, New York, surrounded by her parents and family. She fell in love with a bricklayer who was two decades younger than her, and they married

and adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

Harriet worked as a domestic and saved money to open up the Harriet Tubman home, a place

for elderly and indigent African Americans.

And she was a suffragist. When the war ended at the amendments to the Constitution were passed and ratified,

the last being the 15th Amendment,

giving black men the right to vote.

Many of Harriet Tubman's allies, old friends, white women were infuriated. They were

...