Descendants of Harriet Tubman visit African American museum in Bradenton
On Friday, Manatee County’s only African American museum marked 32 years of existence and welcomed the descendants of Harriet Tubman to help celebrate.
In 1990, Ernest and Fredi Brown founded the Family Heritage House Museum, which first opened in a trailer behind a Head Start in Bradenton and is now located in the Library and Learning Center of the State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota.
The celebration kicked off with a tour led by Heritage House Museum Specialist Kathie Marsh and the Brickler family.
The Bricklers are related to Tubman through Margaret Stewart, a girl who is said to be Tubman’s niece or daughter who escaped with her to freedom and which Tubman had Sen. Henry Seward, New York’s former governor, raise as his daughter.
Tubman is known as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. She helped hundreds of enslaved people regain their freedom and was a nurse and Union spy during the Civil War.
Attendees joined the Brickler family as they viewed the collection of documents and artifacts that reflect African Americans’ history and experiences in Manatee County.
Later in the evening, the Brickler family hosted a Q&A session where they shared their family tree, untold stories about Tubman, and how the slave abolitionist continued to shape the African diaspora in 2022.
The audience was curious to learn the future of Harriet on the $20 bill and how they felt about the depiction of their “Aunt Harriet” in the “Harriet” film released in 2019.
They shared how it was discussions for Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman in the movie, but the role eventually went to Cynthia Erivo.
As for the future of Tubman on the $20 bill, A.J. Brickler IV, an African American literature professor at Florida A&M University, said, ”I don’t know if that will happen in our life. Maybe it’ll happen in my sons’ lifetime.”
