This lesson builds learning resources around a Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast episode (season 5, episode 7), "Young Harriet." The episode discusses the 2017 acquisition of a photograph of the abolitionist Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) by the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The episode also introduces a friend of Tubman, the educator Emily Howland (1827-1929), who first collected the photograph, to show its value to our knowledge of Tubman.

This lesson offers students the chance to learn how archivists use photographs as historical evidence to detect information about a person's personality or life, and as evidence about the world that the person inhabited and her community. Students also interact with other visual and audio sources about Tubman, and test their ability to place artifacts in the right chronological order.

Students use different kinds of sources - a podcast episode, photographs and other historical images, and a modern song - and analyze them interactively to answer critical thinking questions. Students should listen to the episode in two parts and answer content-specific questions, then reflect on guiding questions specified for each class. 

Guiding questions:

• Think about aspects of Harriet Tubman's life you learned about: an enslaved person, an underground railroad conductor, a US soldier, and an advocate of women's rights. What surprises you the most? Why is that?
• How can a photograph be used to study a person’s character and circumstances or community?
• How is a secondary or “after-the-fact” source different from a primary or “at-the-time” source? 
• What are skills you developed in this exercise helpful to analyze other visual sources?

Time 2 classes

Related resources:

• National Portrait Gallery Portraits podcast episode, "Growing Younger with Harriet Tubman"
• Smithsonian Magazine article by Alice George, "Why Harriet Tubman’s Heroic Military Career Is Now Easier to Envision"
• Smithsonian Magazine article by Meilan Solly, "The True Story Behind the Harriet Tubman Movie" 

If you are going to read just one book:

• Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground  by Ann Petry

Glossary of key terms:

• Underground Railroad - a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States before and during the Civil War, and used by enslaved African Americans to escape into free states and Canada.
• Wendell Phillips - an abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney.
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton - a leader of the women's rights movement during the mid- to late-1800s, and main organizer of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention.
• Susan B. Anthony - an antislavery and and women's rights activist who, with Stanton,  in 1890 led formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
• Sojourner Truth - a woman who escaped slavery and became an abolitionist, women's rights activist, and recruiter of black troops for the US Army during the Civil War. At an 1851 women's rights convention, Truth delivered a famous speech now known as "Ain't I a Woman?" 
• carte de visite - a type of small photograph invented by a French photographer Louis Dodero in 1854. Cartes de visite were the size of a modern business card, and were  often traded among friends or presented by visitors.