Heart pounding, she clamped her hand over her mouth and stifled her screen.

Someone was banging a door.

What if she'd been spotted entering the safe house?

If the enslaver reported her missing, would her trick work to ensure her freedom?

This is two-minute black history. What you didn't learn Would her trick work to ensure her freedom?

This is two-minute black history, what you didn't learn in school.

Anna Weems watched as her two brothers were sold down south.

Her father had managed to purchase her mother and sister's freedom, but their enslaver refused to sell Anna. Everyone knew what could happen

to an enslaved girl. The enslaver made Weems sleep beside his bed to keep her close.

So she began planning. At one anguish-filled night,

she finally slipped out under the cover of darkness. Enraised, her enslaver put a $500 bounty

on her head, but Anna kept running. The Underground Railroad hit her first in the black community, then at the home of a white

doctor.

Slave catchers were everywhere, but Weems wasn't going to give up. She

had plans of her own. When winter began, the doctor gave her a pair of pants, a boy's shirt,

and a hat. Dressed as a boy, she swung up on the doctor's horse-draw carriage as the coachman.

At every stop, she nearly fainted from tense

tears. Did anyone suspect her dangerous ruse? No, she made it to her aunt and uncle in Canada.

Anna Weems' story demonstrates a valuable lesson for us as we fight for equality.

When we're faced with a seemingly impossible obstacle, we may have to get creative to overcome

it.

In order to move towards the future, you've got to look to the past.

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