Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the transformative journey from being enslaved to becoming advocates for freedom.
Nancy Gibbs' quote emphasizes the deep resilience and bravery of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, who, despite their origins as slaves, emerged as powerful figures in the fight for freedom. Their innate spirit and determination to challenge oppression define them not just by their birth circumstances but by their unwavering commitment to liberation and justice.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, referencing this quote can inspire activists to continue the fight for equality.
Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrails that are useless right up until the day they are priceless.
Most professional women I know - myself included - long since gave up looking for a rulebook or a roadmap; we make it up as we go along. Every day presents a new choice, a new challenge, which makes long-term career planning seem like an especially abstract exercise.
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.
The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.
Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
All our efforts to guard and guide our children may just get in the way of the one thing they need most from us: to be deeply loved yet left alone so they can try a new skill, new slang, new style, new flip-flops. So they can trip a few times, make mistakes, cross them out, try again, with no one keeping score.
It's not always easy being a full-time feminist - especially as a young woman - when you're constantly being told that what you do is irrelevant. I'm on the defense all the time.
After so much suffering, after enduring so much sacrifice, sanctioned and embraced by our people, what is it that the people of East Timor expect as a result of independence?
We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race, so it starts with Confederate flags. Get them out of here. They have no place for them.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
First, I am afraid to die and I love to live. But an adventure is only an adventure when there is the threat of dying.
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