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Pic of the Week: Harriet Tubman, Seen as Never Before

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The restored Emily Howland Album featuring an a previously unknown portrait of Harriet Tubman, March 25, 2019. Photo by Shawn Miller.

It was a magic moment: Harriet Tubman, revealed as a woman in the fierce prime of her life. In a March 25 ceremony, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and National Museum of African American History and Culture Director Lonnie Bunch unveiled the photo album of abolitionist Emily Howland, featuring a previously unknown portrait of Tubman. The photograph, taken around 1868, captures Tubman in her mid-40s, years younger than most surviving photographs that show her late in life. Here, then, is the leader of the Underground Railroad as she would have appeared to her followers during the 19 trips she made into slave states, leading some 300 enslaved people to freedom, including her aged parents. She also served as a Union spy during the Civil War. The photograph, purchased by the Library and the Smithsonian, is on display in the NMAAHC.

Comments (2)

  1. The image you provided is very low resolution; not useful for actually seeing the details that I assume are present in the original. The image on your blog page is less than 35 KB in total file size, with a JPEG quality of 82.

    Can you provide a link to a good quality image of this photo?

    • Hi Charlie,
      Thanks for writing. Here’s where you can download a Hi-Res of that photo, and download it to boot. https://www.loc.gov/item/2018645050/.

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