Harriet Tubman America 250 Tee

In 1849 she walked out of slavery alone, at night, following the North Star to Pennsylvania. She could have stayed free and safe. Instead Harriet Tubman went back — roughly thirteen times over the next decade, into the same Maryland that had held her, and led some seventy family members and friends out to freedom. She carried a stated creed on every trip: there were two things she had a right to, death or liberty, and no one would take her back alive.

Born into slavery around 1822 and named Araminta Ross, she renamed herself Harriet and became the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad — the secret network of safe houses and sympathetic hands that moved people north. When the Civil War came she served the Union as a scout, nurse, and spy, and in 1863 guided the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, the only Civil War military operation led by a woman, freeing more than seven hundred people in a night. Historians have long noted that the abolitionists who ran the liberty lines saw themselves as heirs to the founders' own creed — that the right to liberty was worth any risk.

This piece is part of the America 250 collection — Iron Union Co.'s designs marking the 250th anniversary of American independence. It stands alongside the founder portraits of America 250 Washington and Jefferson and the Declaration's opening words in When In The Course, rendered cream on dark in the American engraving tradition, with the 1776 — 2026 commemorative dates marking the quarter-millennium.

Our t-shirts are 100% combed and ring-spun cotton — substantial in the hand, classic fit, side-seamed with shoulder taping for shape retention. Built to last, made to wear in for years.