The first sculpture that was dedicated at Scripps College’s new sculpture garden was unique not only because it was the first but also for the following reasons: 1. This sculpture honors Harriet Tubman, who freed herself from the shackles of slavery and became a civil rights activist and iconic conductor of the Underground Railroad, guiding hundreds of enslaved people to freedom. 2. This is Tubman’s first statue on the west coast. 3. Alison Saar is the contemporary American artist who created it, and she is an alumna of Scripps College, a women’s college founded by Ellen Browning Scripps in 1926. Tubman’s statue is a reduced version of the 13-foot bronze statue that has stood on the Harriet Tubman Triangle in Harlem, New York City, since 2008. The college dedicated it on national Harriet Tubman Day, March 10, 2010, in a special ceremony that was part of the college’s yearlong celebration of “The Genius of Women” celebrating the inauguration of its eighth president, Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga. The ceremony included a gospel performance, speeches by the college president, Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga, the artist Alison Saar, and Professor Emerita Samella Lewis, and a poem recitation by the poet Lynne Thompson (’72 alumna), which she wrote for the dedication. This standing sculpture of Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) tells her life story. She is depicted in motion, the roots of slavery on her back; while they try to pull her back, she is unstoppable and continues forward. Her skirt has prints of the faces of the people she rescued from slavery, as if she is the train that carries them to freedom. The statue’s base is surrounded by tiles with symbols representing moments from Tubman’s life and traditional African-American quilting signs. Read more...