Description:
When you walk into Ruggles Station from the Northeastern University campus, Samuel Allen's monument Harriet Tubman AKA Moses is at the top of the stairs, right before the MBTA map and A Nubian Notion, a convenience store. The granite piece stands a little over five feet high and approximately two feet wide. It is speckled gray granite with rugged sides, but a face and back marred only by the poem's words chiseled onto the surface. These words are easiest read at the top of the monument, and fade as you read further down.
About the Author:
Harriet Tubman AKA Moses was written by Samuel Allen, also known as Paul Vesey. Allen was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1917. He began his education at Fiske University, then moved on to Harvard Law School, and continued graduate work at the New School for Social Research and the Sorbonne in Paris. The beginning of his career was dedicated to criminal justice, but as he grew older Allen dedicated most of his time to educating youth. His educational career began at Tuskegee University in 1970 and from there he moved to Wesleyan University and finally to Boston University, from which he retired in 1981. Allen's poetry has been published in four collections: Elfebein Zahne, Ivory Tusks and Other Poems, Paul Vesey's Ledger, and Every Round. He has also worked as a translator on such works as Jean-Paul Sartre's Orphee Noir and Leopold Senghor's Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poesie Negre. Influenced by his clergyman father, Allen has cited the Southern black church as one of the major influences of his poetry.
Response:
The first thought to go through my head when I saw the Ruggles Station monument is this: How have I been using this train station for over three years and never once noticed it before? But it seems I am not the only one. While I was reading the poem two people walked into me on separate occasions. The first is shocked, as if no human being has ever or could ever exist within this area of dead space. The second seems to resent me. To be overlooked seems to be the monument's biggest characteristic, for even the MBTA employees look at me blankly when I ask them about it.
Black holes aside, the poem, Harriet Tubman AKA Moses is very intriguing. I immediately make the connection between Harriet Tubman and Moses: both icons of an oppressed people, trying to lead them to the promised land. Dare I say, however, that Harriet Tubman proves to be the more staunch follower for in the poem she does not question God but lays her faith in him unquestioning. On the other hand, I find it a bit inappropriate that in the poem Tubman forces the man to go on by threatening him with a gun. If not for the fact that this somewhat takes away from her Bible image, then my reservation comes from the fact that this monument stands in a station which has seen a fair amount of violence.
What I responded to most from Harriet Tubman AKA Moses was the imagery of the stars. This image works on more than one level. At first I thought of the stars as Tubman and the other runaways as finally being safe: they've broken through to open space where they're no longer imprisoned, both figuratively and literally. My next connection was between the stars and their synonym the heavens. Thinking of the stars as heaven brings me back to the image of Tubman as a Biblical figure. In helping to free the other slaves, Tubman earns herself a position in the Christian Heaven.
By Lindsey Mawhiney.
