Across the country, people are commemorating Juneteenth in various ways. Some are attending festivals. Others are holding community cookouts. A group of Black girls are participating in a two-week “Journey to Freedom” Tour from North Carolina to Canada to trace the steps of Harriet Tubman, one of the most prominent freedom fighters in US history.
The tour is convened by Leadership LINKS (Love, Inspiration, Networks, Knowledge, Service), an organization founded in 2015 by six Black U.S. Naval Academy graduates. The group bonded over their shared passions for leadership, education, mentorship, public service, and faith, and they created the organization to help cultivate the leadership skills of Black girls. The group provides leadership training, trips, and other experiences to girls in sixth through twelfth grades during a nine-month program.
“As our nation wrestles with how to tell the stories of the past and who and what should be highlighted in our history, this tour creates an opportunity for today’s emerging leaders to walk in and be inspired by the steps of their ancestors”
In addition to leadership training, a key component of the program is learning information that is often not taught in public schools. The group researched both Tubman and Sojourner Truth, a noted abolitionist and the subject of a book written by one of the founders of Leadership LINKS, Natasha Sistrunk Robinson.
In an interview with NPQ, Robinson noted that she believes “travel is a gift” and that part of the reason she became a leader is because her parents afforded her the ability to travel and see things beyond her own community. She hopes that the Journey to Freedom Tour following Tubman’s path will similarly inspire the girls in the program to dream big.
“As our nation wrestles with how to tell the stories of the past and who and what should be highlighted in our history, this tour creates an opportunity for today’s emerging leaders to walk in and be inspired by the steps of their ancestors,” Robinson said, invoking the idea of Sankofa—a Ghanaian term that emphasizes the importance of learning from the past to build a better future.
“When these stories are being outright contested, it feels like an important thing to bear witness to.”
Leadership LINKS initially planned the trip for 2020, but it was delayed due to COVID-19. As Robinson noted, it now comes at a time of active rollbacks of civil protections, mounting book bans, and attempts to soften or erase the legacies of people like Tubman. In the lead-up to the tour, Robinson said she has been reflecting on the words of Coretta Scott King: “Freedom is never really won; you earn it and win it in every generation.”
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Notable stops on the trip include Monticello in Virginia; the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, and the US Naval Academy in Maryland; the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Howard University in Washington, DC; and Salem Chapel British Methodist Episcopal Church in Ontario, where Harriet Tubman attended while living in Canada.
“Part of what we’re trying to do is expose the girls not only to the beginning of our nation…but also to expose them to the kind of contradictions and hypocrisy at the heart of the nation and let a more complex and nuanced view of what America is, has been, and can be inform this trip from the beginning,” said civil rights historian Gregory Thompson, speaking specifically about the stop at Monticello—the residence and plantation of Thomas Jefferson.
“This is not the first time, and it will not be the last things have been bad or hard or difficult in this country….So what are you going to do? What role are you going to play in what this country can come to?”
Thompson, who is White, focuses on racial memory in his work. He was part of the planning process for the tour and believes it’s essential to center stories of African American history because many of these stories have been hidden or overlooked. “When these stories are being outright contested, it feels like an important thing to bear witness to,” Thompson said in an interview with NPQ. “I see that as part of the racial healing work in the United States. We can’t heal until we tell the truth.”
Thompson also said that beginning the tour on Juneteenth helps contextualize the fact that “a lot of work has been done, and yet there is work to do.” Both things can be true, he noted.
Robinson said she hopes the trip will offer the girls knowledge and inspiration—and that it will also serve as a call to action. “This is not the first time things have been bad or hard or difficult in this country,” she said. “This is not the first time, and it will not be the last. So what are you going to do? What role are you going to play in what this country can come to?”
The trip has already begun to inspire the young people who will be participating. In an interview with NPQ, Drew, a rising high school junior who has been involved in Leadership LINKS since she was in seventh grade, noted that the tour stop at Howard University has piqued her interest in possibly attending an HBCU. She called the trip a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and said that she’s particularly excited to follow in Harriet Tubman’s footsteps.
Leadership LINKS is also offering virtual tickets for those who can’t make the physical journey.
