A new mural in Auburn is paying tribute to the city’s most famous history maker.
The Harriet Tubman Boosters of Auburn cut the ribbon on “Harriet Tubman: Her Life in Freedom.”
“This is wonderful, it’s a beautiful mural,” said the great-great-grandniece of Harriet Tubman, Pauline Johnson. “It’s a wonderful celebration. And I am so glad that I am still alive to see it.”
After three and a half years, the family of Harriet Tubman and community members came together Saturday afternoon to celebrate the mural of Tubman, which focuses on her life after the Underground Railroad.
“She continued doing so many important things when she lived in Auburn,” Harriet Tubman mural committee booster Debra Rose Brillati said. “So, that’s what we thought Auburn could uniquely contribute to, was showing that history.
One of the aspects of Tubman’s life that the mural highlights is her work during the Combahee River Raid that she lead to help free hundreds of slaves.
“She started the Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes in Auburn because there was no place for those people to be cared for,” Brillati said. “Because they wouldn’t be taken in white facilities. So she started that on her property here.”
The mural also focuses on her spiritual life, she was a member of the AME Zion Church in Auburn, which is still standing, as well as her work during women’s suffrage.
“A real memory, a memory of Aunt Harriet,” Johnson said. “Though I never knew her I am very grateful to be a relative of hers.”
The artist, Arthur Hutchinson, is an Auburn native. He says it’s great to be able to do something he loves and have a greater impact.
“This town has changed so much in the past 20 years,” Hutchinson said. “There’s the arts and the cultural, food [and] the music. It’s been great to be a part of that change that’s been taking place in this town.”
The Harriet Tubman Boosters had a goal to raise $40,000 for the mural and were able to surpass that. The extra funds will go toward putting up a marker on the street that will explain the details of the mural.