Mama Moses Will Guide The Way

Music Playing: Moses Don’t Get Lost by Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

There was an underground that we once ran 

Follow the star that leads us north

There is a path to freedom 

Follow the drinking gourd

We danced our way and cried 

We fought off the tears in our eyes

Our fears we claimed as lies 

And we proclaimed “let our dreams never die” 

Brown woman with infinite ancient soul 

You ran to freedom, then you went back

Fearlessly carried salvation on your back 

Red and white stripes of sacrifice 

Brown woman with infinite ancient soul 

Resting in spells of divinity

THE MIGHTY HAND guiding the way

Protection in the darkest of night and the lightest of day

Brown woman with infinite ancient soul 

Mama Moses will Guide the Way

NeFesha Ruth, 2022

Mama Moses Will Guide The Way, 2022

(Read in the above video)

I wrote this poem to accompany my art piece, “Mama Moses will Guide the Way.” As an ancestor of Harriet Tubman, this piece is a reflection of who I am. It is also a reminder to myself of my identity and the strength and fortitude that exist within me. Just prior to the creation of Mama Moses will Guide the Way, I was facing great frustration and feelings of despair. I climbed my way out through this art piece. For me, self care involves making things. Healing involves getting my hands dirty. Harriet Tubman aka Araminta Ross was a fearless combatant against injustice, ready to die for the salvation of her people and yet, so full of faith in her creator. Harriet Tubman’s journey evokes in me the biblical story of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abendigo. 

In the book of Daniel we see the story of their devotion and just before being thrown into the blazing furnace, they stated, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, not worship the golden image which thou has set up.”[1] Boldly, these three Israelite men were willing to burn in the fire before they succumbed to the oppression of their oppressors. With analogous strength and fortitude, Harriet Tubman spoke her resolve when she said, “There are two things I’ve got a right to, and these are, Death or Liberty – one or the other I mean to have. No one will take me back alive; I shall fight for my liberty, and when the time has come for me to go, the Lord will let them, kill me.” The familiar scent of a mind resolved to fight for justice and willing to die for what they believed was their calling, reigned in the voice of Harriet Tubman. It is an ancient resolve that I desire to contemporize with my visual story art. 

Hand painted Kente cloth designs with iconographic adinkra and ancient Israelite symbols adorn the dress in this piece. A menorah as the heritage of many in the diaspora, continuing the traditions of redemption and salvation found in the Torah. Quite fitting for the person that Harriet Tubman was and left us, to remember and glean inspiration from, known as Moses as a direct pointer to the leader of the Israelites, out of Egypt. The first I will explain is the Adinkra symbol, Gye Nyame which means “except for God,'' and is a symbol of the supremacy of God. Tubman explicitly expressed her dependency and faith in God. Due to narcoleptic episodes caused by a severe head trauma when Harriet was 12 years old, night visions and hallucinations were normal occurrences that Harriet accredited to her faith in God and in every way, her life was proof that God spoke and directed her in a powerful way. 

In the faith traditions of black culture, as Zora Neal Hurston once stated, “just as the Biblical Israelites spread out to every corner of the globe, wherever the children of Africa have been scattered by slavery, there is the acceptance of Moses as the fountain of mystic powers."[2] In the ancestral cultural heritage of the Hebraic culture, the menorah (seen in the iconography of this piece) was a ceremonial work of art found in the temple, representing an eternal flame, an everlasting light. Biblically, the faithful and righteous were called, “the light of the world.” Harriet was a definitive light to her people, guiding them to freedom. She kept going back to God’s people and showing them the way, out of slavery [the house of bandage] and into the marvelous light of freedom and redemption.

At the top right hand of this art piece, I placed the Adinkra Sankofa symbol. This symbol literally means, “go back and get it.” These symbols come from the Akon people of Ghana. The Akon tribe is a part of the larger tribe of the Ashanti (Asante) people. Harriet Tubman comes from the Ashanti tribe which is a biblically Levitical priestly tribe.  This symbol has a clear and distinct correlation to the work done through the life of Harriet Tubman, going back and guiding her nation to freedom and inspiring people to look back on the past, and find a guiding light into the future. 

When I was a child, my mother made me a doll. I loved this doll. Fully handmade, it had clothes sewn by my mother. The skin was brown, and the face was painted to resemble a beautiful brown girl. Her hair was made of yarn and that always stuck with me; the ingenious nature of my mother’s creativity struck me. I wanted to pay homage to my mother with this piece and so I took small pieces of yarn for Harriet’s hair. As a mosaic artist I have begun to broaden out to more protruding, 3D objects. The materials found on this piece are a reflection of material culture that has had meaning to my life, my community, and my culture as well. 

My family tree, leading back to Harriet Tubman. Lauren N. Fisher is my birth name which I officially changed in 2021. Courtesy of Ancestry.com

Sitting in the backdrop of the blood lost and shed during the great indiscretion of slavery, willing to tread the trails of forbidden freedom and generationally embedded hatred, ‘Mama Moses will Guide the Way,’ gives the viewer a fiery backdrop of love and passion with which the many rebelled against the system and faught for freedom, justice, and truth. 

I find it fitting that in the original picture taken of Harriet Tubman, she is standing, hands rested on a chair that has a jacket laid across it. So often, in pictures during slavery, the enslaved individuals and families are standing while thier white “owners,” are sitting. Sometimes, an enslaved woman carries a white child while the white family sits in positions of authority, expressing their superfluous superiority and posterity and societally deemed “superiority.” To me the empty chair that Harriet rest her hand on says, I am free. There is no owner to occupy me. The chair is mine now.” 

NeFesha Ruth, 2022

[1] Daniel 3:17-18

[2] Hurston, Moses xxiii, xxiv