Critical Thinking: Analysis and Synthesis

Video Transcription

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Harriet Tubman is an American hero. She holds a unique place in the history of the Underground Railroad, and she is the first American woman to lead an armed raid during battle.

But until recently, her past was shrouded in mystery.

We didn't know much about what went into creating that human being that risked her life to fight for freedom.

This determined biographer use critical thinking steps to crack the case.

My name is Kate Clifford Larson, and I'm an historian, author, and consultant. I wrote a book called Bound for the Promised Land-- Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.

Kate also served as the historical consultant on the 2019 film, Harriet.

The story of Harriet Tubman first captured Kate's imagination years ago, when she was still a University student.

I wanted to know more about her. I decided to go to the library. And all I could find were two 19th century biographies, and then one written in 1943. I said, is this possible? She's so famous. Someone must have written about her since the 1940s. And in fact, no one had.

That's when Kate decided she would write a modern biography of Harriet Tubman.

The old biographies focused on Tubman's escape from slavery and work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Once she achieved her own freedom, Tubman returned south about 13 times and rescued 70 family and friends.

During the Civil War, Tubman led an armed raid up the Combahee River. They routed out rebel forces. They burned down plantations, and they liberated 750 people.

But not all of Tubman's story had been chronicled.

Most of her early life was missing from the historical record-- where she was raised, who raised her, who influenced her. Those are important questions.

So Kate set out to uncover Harriet's mysterious past. She would need to use key steps of critical thinking to do it. First, she had to gather knowledge. She started by forming a question.

The overarching main question is how Tubman became this extraordinary human being. I needed to know where she acquired the abilities that she had. They had to come from things that she had learned from her family and the community that she was raised in.

Kate's next step was to increase her comprehension. She began searching for information about Harriet's family.

I traveled to Maryland, where she was born and raised. And I found records in the courthouse. Enslaved people were passed down as property in wills, in probate records, estate records. So those records are part of courthouse documentation.

Kate's diligence paid off. She began uncovering details of Tubman's early life that had never been explored.

I discovered that Harriet Tubman's parents were enslaved by different masters. When Harriet was a small child, her enslaver took her mother and her siblings away from their father. So the family was separated.

When Harriet was a teenager, her enslaver hired her out to a family that lived in Madison, Maryland. But I had no idea who the family was, or where Madison was.

Again, Kate turned to the court records.

They lived in a maritime community, on the water, in a small bay. They had shipbuilding business. They had thousands of acres of forest that needed to be cut.

For her next step, Kate took to the land to analyze how Harriet's move and her relationship to her father might have impacted her.

Going to Madison was really important, so that I could walk that landscape and see where this family lived. It turned out that Tubman's enslavers lived not too far from where Harriet Tubman's father lived. He was a lumberjack, a timber foreman, a leader in the community. He had many, many survival abilities. And in Madison, Harriet and her father were able to spend time together. She worked on a timber gang with him.

Next, Kate began to synthesize what she'd learned.

Being near her father afforded her the opportunity to learn how to survive in the woods, how to read that landscape, how to travel through it and negotiate it, how to feed yourself and keep yourself warm or cool, protect yourself from predators and disease.

Kate now understood the role of Harriet's father. Continuing to synthesize, she realized something else. Right on the Madison waterways, where Harriet had moved, a well-known Underground Railroad network was known to have operated.

Black mariners that came in and out of the docks carried messages secretly back and forth from disparate African-American communities around the Atlantic seaboard, about freedom, what was going on, who was fighting for the end of slavery. And I realized the Black mariners, they could teach her how to read that night sky, and follow the North Star and many other constellations.

Kate's critical thinking steps had led to a breakthrough about the forces that shaped Harriet Tubman.

Moving to Madison that changed her life. In Madison, she learned the abilities that she used on the Underground Railroad and in the Civil War. Those abilities were crucial to her survival and her success. That's what she gained from living there and learning from her father and the black mariners.

With this new understanding of Harriet's origins, Kate was ready for her last step-- to take action and write her book.

The information that came out of court records, and then the history of the time period, the landscape of her life-- I put that all together to develop a narrative of her life.

Published in 2003, Kate's book is considered by many to be the definitive biography of Harriet Tubman.

When we look at historical figures, it's important to know where they came from. Discovering Harriet Tubman's family and community, I was able to understand her and how she became this extraordinary human being.

Gather knowledge, increase comprehension, analyze, synthesize, and take action. These critical thinking steps led to success. You, too, can use them in school, work, or even to solve one of history's mysteries.