'Harriet Tubman' Google doodle honors Black History Month

The Underground Railroad's best-known conductor

Today’s Google Doodle depicts American abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman (c.1820-1913) in honor of the first day of Black History Month.

Born a slave in Maryland, Tubman worked as a maid, nurse, and cook before she left her family and fled to Philadelphia in 1849. In Dec. 1850, she returned to Maryland to help her sister and two children escape to freedom. For the next decade, she became the best-known conductor of the Underground Railroad, a secret network that helped fugitive slaves in the South reach safety in Northern free states or in Canada.

Tubman often dressed the escapees in disguises, according to the National Women’s History Museum: “If it was announced that a group of male slaves had bolted from a plantation, she dressed the fugitives as women for the trip north.” Her dedication earned her the nickname “Moses.”