Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert

Harriet is a fictionalized version of Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous African Americans in history and a noted conductor on the Underground Railroad. The fictionalized Harriet is introduced through the framework of her history, and Darnell is awestruck even to be in the same room with her. He instantly takes note of her no-nonsense attitude, observing, “Harriet Tubman is direct” (6). She knows what her goals are, understands how to achieve them, and has no issue wielding her authority within her group.

In addition to Harriet’s commanding presence, Darnell notes that she radiates strength and agency. She looks as though she has led a difficult life, but nothing about her personality suggests someone fatigued by difficulty or weighed down by trouble. Harriet embodies the resilience that this book argues is a key facet of Black identity in the United States.

Harriet also becomes an important mouthpiece for much of the novel’s thematic inquiry into the erasure of Black history. She fills in many gaps in Darnell’s knowledge, explaining to him how instrumental African Americans have always been in their own liberation and dispelling the myth that white abolitionists always worked in service of their Black counterparts. Harriet thus becomes a key point of engagement with the role that exploitation has long played in social and racial justice movements. She notes the difficulty of telling her story over and over to garner sympathy for the abolitionist cause and raise donations, and readily admits that she was not always fairly compensated for her labor. Here, too, she provides Darnell with new information that causes him to look at history in a new light.

Harriet is also dedicated to teaching new generations about her experiences and the experiences of formerly enslaved people through music, an art form that she knows is both part of her cultural heritage as a Black woman and one of the best vehicles through which to reach the new generation. Her music is powerful, impactful, and achieves her stated goals of both raising awareness and affirming the identities and experiences of Black Americans.

Odessa is one of the members of Harriet’s band and a formerly enslaved woman. She is kind and personable, and she becomes the first of the Freemans with whom Darnell feels a real bond. She can be soft-spoken, but has a sense of humor and puts Darnell at ease.

Odessa also becomes an important point of engagement with African American history and one of Darnell’s teachers. He observes that she “doesn’t look aged and worn down like Harriet” (12). He learns that this is in part because she worked in a large plantation house rather than in the fields. His assumption was that this kind of labor was less traumatic, but Odessa corrects him. She explains how long the hours were, how grueling the work was, and that she was under constant threat of sexual assault from her enslaver.

Odessa is bi-racial, and although the novel does not explicitly make the connection, the implication is that she herself is likely a child of rape: She and Harriet both note that attractive women who worked in the house were more frequently sexually assaulted than their peers who were forced to labor in fields, and bi-racial women on plantations were often the children of enslavers.

Much of this history was unknown to Darnell, and he finds that even when she confirms bits and pieces he was aware of, hearing the story from her first-hand is more impactful. Although he is increasingly aware that nothing in his experience has truly given him the ability to understand what life was like for the enslaved, speaking with actually formerly enslaved people is instructive and enlightening.

Buck is described initially through his imposing physical presence and his keen intellect. He is as “wide as he is tall and [with] arms as thick as his thighs,” quiet but “smarter than most people” (12). He initially teaches Darnell that appearances can be deceiving: Since Buck is quiet, Darnell does not immediately characterize him as a highly intelligent individual, but once he gets to know Buck, he realizes that he himself was guilty of stereotyping men who are both strong and silent.

Buck is emotionally intelligent in addition to being an intellectual: He deduces both Darnell’s queer sexuality and his interest in keeping it a secret. Buck does not judge Darnell for being gay, demonstrating his kindness and acceptance, and he does not force Darnell to discuss it, further showcasing his empathy.

Buck is also one of this novel’s key points of engagement with the complex role of religion in Black communities and African American history. Harriet is a devout Christian, while Darnell has always struggled with his community’s service to a Christian God. Buck gives voice to many of Darnell’s doubts, explaining that during his years of enslavement, he saw Christianity used as a tool of oppression. In Buck’s estimation, the portions of the Bible (like Moses’s story) that highlighted resistance and escape from bondage were left out of the scripture that enslavers taught to enslaved men and women. Instead, they focused on verses that extolled the virtues of obedience, servitude, and hard work.

This is a difficult conversation because, although Christianity was used as a tool of oppression in the manner that Buck describes, it is also a large part of many Black communities in America, and this book’s engagement with it is significant. One of this author’s main focal points is the multi-faceted nature of Black identity in America: They argue that there is room for many different kinds of Blackness—gay, straight, religious, and agnostic or atheistic. While religion might not be an important facet of identity for Buck or Darnell, it remains central to characters like Harriet.

DJ Quakes is one of the members of Harriet’s band and one of the characters with whom Darnell develops the closest friendship. He is “about four feet tall” (15), but like Buck, his physical presence is only a small part of his identity. Quakes’s nickname derives from his religion: He is a Quaker. He helps Darnell to understand the differences between Quakers and other denominations, explaining that their group lacks the traditional hierarchy of clergy and lay persons, and that their meetings are characterized by silence broken only when someone wants to speak.

This model opens up Darnell’s eyes to new modalities of worship and allows him to broaden his understanding of what it means to be a religious person. Like everyone else in Harriet’s group, Quakes’s relationship with Darnell is in part instructive. The Quakers were widely known for their work in the abolitionist movement and on the Underground Railroad, and as such, Quakes is an important point of engagement with African American history writ large. Quakes does more than instruct Darnell, however, as the two bond over their shared love for African American music. Darnell is touched by Quakes’s interest in records, and the two peruse record shops together, getting to know each other through the artists that each is drawn to.

Here, too, the author makes a subtle argument about the varied nature of Black identity in the United States. Quakes is defined not just by his religion, work in the abolitionist movement, or status as Darnell’s teacher. He also possesses a joyful love for Black art, and their bonding over records becomes another moment during which this novel argues that Black identity is not a monolith.

Moses is Harriet’s brother and her band’s drummer. He is initially portrayed through the strength of his bond with Harriet. She describes him as “the one that helped me see we don’t have to be property” (16), and credits him as the source of much of her motivation to work on the Underground Railroad. Like the other members of the band, he is a kind and accepting person but does not shy away from difficult discussions about race and racism in the United States. He worked in the abolitionist movement with Harriet, and he shares her criticisms of the way that Black voices were instrumental in shaping public perception about the horrors of enslavement, but were also exploited.

Moses is also instrumental in Darnell’s learning process and the self-discovery and self-growth that he experiences during the novel. It is the information about William Dorsey Swann’s drag balls in particular that helps Darnell to place himself, as a gay, Black man, within the broader story of Black history, and Darnell is struck by how much Moses knows about this aspect of the historical record that has been largely erased from public memory. Darnell is even sure at one point that Moses references the cult classic film about Black transgender women in New York City’s drag ball culture, Paris is Burning, a point of connection that allows Moses to speak even more personally to Darnell, who feels more connected to contemporary than to 19th-century history.