CAMBRIDGE-- --Even the great man himself acknowledged the disparity in their recognition.
"I have had the applause of the crowd," Frederick Douglass wrote to fellow abolitionist, escaped slave and Marylander Harriet Ross Tubman.
But, he wrote in the 1868 letter, three years after slavery was abolished in the United States, "The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses to your devotion to freedom."
Nearly a century and a half later, Tubman's family descendents say there's still truth - and consequences - to his words.
"We're tired of being in the back," said Patricia Ross Hawkins, 45, a Tubman family descendant who lives in Salisbury, on the Eastern Shore - once home to both Douglass and Tubman. Hawkins is a member of the sixth generation descended from a brother of Tubman, whose maiden name was Ross.
Though they mean no disrespect to Douglass, family descendants say the woman known as "Moses" among the slaves she led to freedom along the Underground Railroad deserves a greater share of historical attention. Douglass has a sparkling waterfront museum and venerable high school named for him in the city, and his Washington mansion was reopened to the public this month after costly renovations.
Tubman sites in the region include a modest, volunteer-run museum in Cambridge that is open twice a week and a Baltimore elementary school.
To underscore the point, the text of Douglass' letter is to be read today as a statewide tribute to Tubman opens at the Frederick Douglass--Isaac Myers Maritime Park in Fells Point, a $13 million Living Classrooms Foundation facility that opened last year.
"She's in a league of her own. We think there should be a state-of-the-art museum, a learning center and more buildings, statues and highways named after her," said Hawkins, an Army veteran. "I don't think she's been recognized on a national level as she should be."
Historians proffer a number of explanations for the disparity. The urbane and charismatic Douglass, born into slavery in Talbot County, became a celebrity who traveled abroad and called on Abraham Lincoln at the White House. Douglass also made a name as a newspaper publisher and later as a diplomat. His eloquent autobiographical account of bondage and escape is required reading in many schools.
Tubman, by contrast, crossed countless miles in stealth, leading fugitives by land, swamp and water through Chesapeake country. She never learned to read or write and much of what is known about her was handed down by oral tradition.
Louis C. Fields, president of the African American Tourism Council of Maryland, predicts more attention will be paid to Tubman, given a wave of interest in redressing slavery's scars and in African-American historical culture, museums and tourism.
"We'd like to move up Harriet a bit," Fields said.
Until recently, he said, most of the books about her were written for children.
That's changing. Three Tubman biographers have sought to fill in the record in the past few years, including Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. Larson said her book, published three years ago, was inspired by going to the library with her daughter and finding a children's book about Tubman.
"I thought, 'This woman is amazing.' Then I went to look for an adult biography, and all I could find was one written in 1943," said Larson, who teaches history at Simmons College in Boston. "She was neglected by the academic community for so long, but the time had come."
For years Tubman's memory was tended by family and community members. Public spaces dedicated to her often reflect the work of devoted amateurs. Currently there is a cinderblock mural in a park and a highway named for her in Cambridge.
A storefront museum on Race Street in Cambridge, managed by volunteers, is open two days a week. The exhibits are plain, such as the 1840 census showing the number of free blacks and slaves in Dorchester County was about even, hovering at 4,000.
It's a far cry from Cedar Hill, Douglass' historic home in Washington. Earlier this month, the National Park Service reopened the mansion to the public after a more than $2 million restoration.
Donald Pinder, who heads the Harriet Tubman Organization that runs the museum in Cambridge, said he considers her a unique figure who should not be seen as second to Douglass.
"What she did, nobody else did. He [Douglass] had the exposure, while she was leading a secret organization," Pinder said. "Very few people saw her, so she was never known nationally like Douglass. Harriet was an ordinary person who could not read or write, but an extraordinary person who gave all those people hope."
Two new government projects may help redress the imbalance. The state has convened a working group to identify land for a modern Tubman museum in Dorchester County. The National Park Service is considering a Harriet Tubman National Park, either in Maryland or upstate New York.
Maryland can make a strong case for the park.
Born into slavery, Tubman grew up on a plantation in Bucktown owned by the Brodess family. Her youth was spent working fields, hunting, crabbing - and yearning for freedom.
Her first attempt to escape with her brothers ended in failure when they convinced her to turn back. Later, acting on her own, she walked away from the plantation one night. She made it to Pennsylvania, a free state.
She made eight or nine expeditions deep into Maryland to rescue scores of slaves, many of them from her family network. According to legend, she carried a musket - both for protection against capture and to keep wavering escapees from turning back and betraying the group.
Employing ruses and disguises, she became known as Moses for delivering some of her people from bondage. She became so successful that slave catchers offered a bounty of at least $12,000 for her apprehension.
She was never caught.
During the Civil War, she worked as a Union spy and nurse. Afterward, she turned to women's rights as her cause and founded a charitable home for the poor and elderly.
Married twice, she died childless in 1913 in Auburn, N.Y., in her early 90s. She never knew her birthday.
In her day, Tubman had her admirers and allies. John Brown, the fierce abolitionist who launched an attack raid on an arsenal in Harpers Ferry, called her "General Tubman."
Although she never returned to live free in Maryland, a cluster of Rosses still reside in the flat terrain of Dorchester County, not far from Bucktown.
Valerie Manokey, 71, is the oldest living family descendant. She bears a striking resemblance to her famous relative and offers an explanation for the blackouts that bedeviled the abolitionist after she was struck in the head as a girl by a white overseer.
"She had God leading the way. When she fell asleep [blacked out], that was God saying, 'Harriet, you need a rest.' That's what I told my children," Manokey said in an interview at a diner in Cambridge. Also at the table were Manokey's sisters Peggy Ross and Betty Lue Ross, and their niece Hawkins, who sat with her 2-year-old daughter, Maya.
Darline Ross Rogers, another keeper of family memories, said Tubman was a superior slingshot shooter and often killed muskrats for group suppers - a dish the family enjoys to this day.
Tubman's relatives continue to draw from and share inspiration from her life story: spirituals sung to warn slaves of approaching danger, quilts containing coded messages hung in Quaker safe houses, how she learned from her father to navigate by the North Star.
Said Rogers: "Things happen when humble people dare to dream."
jamie.stiehm@baltsun.com
Tubman events
Baltimore
10 a.m. today: Harriet Ross Tubman Remembrance Day celebration at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, 1417 Thames St.
Annapolis
9 a.m. March 9: Tubman's family members will be honored by lawmakers at the State House.
Frederick County
10 a.m. March 24: Open house and tours of Cooling Spring Farm in Adamstown, south of Frederick. A former "safe house" on the Maryland Underground Railroad trail, the farm is owned by descendents of an abolitionist family who aided fugitive slaves.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information and a full schedule of events, go to baltimoresun.com/tubman.