Harriet Tubman Black History Month Event This Weekend In Yardley

YARDLEY, PA —A historical re-enactment about Harriet Tubman highlights Black History Month events in the borough.

"Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, and the Freedom Fighters" is a first-person presentation about Tubman's escape from slavery up to Philadelphia and her return trips to the Maryland plantation.

The performances will also highlight Bucks County's Underground Railroad "stops," and the Pennsylvania Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway.

The performances are scheduled for Saturday-Sunday, Feb. 25-26, with a performance at the Gather Place Museum in Yardley and also at the Pennsbury Manor Auditorium in Morrisville.

Performances are 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Shirley Lee Corsey, conservator and executive director of The Gather Place, has held numerous events over the past few months at the South Canal Street museum dedicated to African-American history.

“Black Resistance” is the theme of this year’s observance, which starts Wednesday and continues through the month. Since 1976, every U.S. president has set aside February as a month to celebrate the achievements of African Americans and their role in U.S. history.

Events in February will explore “how African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings” since their arrival on the shores in the 1600s, according to the sponsoring Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

The first Black History Month observance was held 97 years ago. Called Negro History Week at the time, it was established by Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson, the son of illiterate former slaves, who believed that the important contributions of Black Americans had been largely overlooked in published accounts of U.S. history.

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He established the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915 to create a social scientific collection recording and publicizing the accomplishments of Black Americans.