MARCH 30, 2020

Dear Faculty and Staff,

I recently reached out to David, a former student who is now an emergency room physician at a hospital in New York City. I wanted to thank him for all he was doing during the pandemic to care for our vulnerable neighbors. He was exhausted but grateful. When I asked him what I could do for him from sheltered-in-place San Francisco, he replied, “Please send dog or child or nature pictures frequently…It helps me remember what we’re fighting for.”

I happily obliged with pictures of my joyful and affectionate dog, Harriet. David asked how Harriet got her name so I described the heroines who inspired me to choose this name. As silly as it sounds, every time I call to Harriet, I think of these women. Reflecting on these role models again with David, I discerned some wisdom provided by their examples that might help us now.

Harriet Jacobs wrote the first female-authored slave narrative. Her remarkable story of hiding and escape to freedom, followed by an active life in service to the Union cause, teaches me patience. To elude her slaveholder and protect her children, Harriet hid for seven years in a small attic. Her patience in enduring the physical and emotional hardships of confinement, of persisting despite the dangers of discovery and the uncertainty of the outcome demonstrate that she did what she had to do to survive the circumstances and prepare for a new life for herself and her children.

Harriet Tubman, the better-known abolitionist who, like Frederick Douglass was from my home state of Maryland, demonstrated a fearless ability to lead, inspire, and support others in the face of seemingly intractable and dangerous circumstances. She resisted the idea that confinement was a permanent condition; she kept her eyes on the prize. However long it took, freedom was where she was always going and she seldom walked alone.

Harriet Powers was a formerly enslaved Georgia folk artist who lived a hard life in the South while farming and raising nine children. But she made time to quilt, to use whatever scraps she could muster to bring beauty to her world and peace to her life. Of the few quilts that survive, one is in the Smithsonian collections. Combining biblical, African, and southern folkways in a visual representation of her inspired view of creation, Harriet always knew where she stood, no matter what was happening in the world around her.

Harriet the Spy gave me hope, as an awkward young girl who wasn’t sure what the future held, that maybe one day my strange ways would make a good story, too. Harriet is called a spy, but what she really does is pay attention to the world around her that doesn’t pay attention to her. And she writes about it all and that gets her in to trouble but it also helps her find her voice and her way and find her friends, all while hanging on to her truth of life as she sees it.

If we can be like the Harriets, all shall be well.