Moses Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Slavery and civil rights==== [[Underground Railroad]] conductor and [[American Civil War]] veteran [[Harriet Tubman]] was nicknamed "Moses" due to her various missions in freeing and ferrying escaped enslaved persons to freedom in the free states of the [[United States]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clinton |first=Catherine |author-link=Catherine Clinton |year=2004 |title=Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom |location=New York |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |isbn=0-316-14492-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/harriettubmanroa00clin }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | first1 = Joyce Stokes | last1 = Jones | first2 = Michele Jones | last2 = Galvin | title = Beyond the Underground: Aunt Harriet, Moses of Her People | year = 1999β2012 | publisher = Sankofa Media | isbn = 9780989575508 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=2-asngEACAAJ}}</ref> Historian Gladys L. Knight describes how leaders who emerged during and after the period in which [[slavery in the United States|slavery]] was legal often personified the Moses symbol. "The symbol of Moses was empowering in that it served to amplify a need for freedom."<ref>{{cite book |last=Knight |first=Gladys L. |title=Icons of African American Protest |volume=I |publisher=Greenwood |year=2009 |page=183}}</ref> Therefore, when [[Abraham Lincoln]] was [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln|assassinated in 1865]] after the passage of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|amendment to the Constitution outlawing slavery]], [[African Americans|Black Americans]] said they had lost "their Moses".<ref>{{cite book| first =Martha | last = Hodes|title=Mourning Lincoln|url= https://archive.org/details/mourninglincoln0000hode | url-access =registration |year=2015 |publisher=Yale University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/mourninglincoln0000hode/page/164 164], 237| isbn = 978-0-300-21356-0}}</ref> Lincoln biographer [[Charles Carleton Coffin]] writes, "The millions whom Abraham Lincoln delivered from slavery will ever liken him to Moses, the deliverer of Israel."<ref>{{cite book | last = Coffin | first = Charles Carleton | title = Abraham Lincoln | publisher = Ulan Press | type = reprint | orig-year = 1893 | year = 2012 | page = 534}}</ref> In the 1960s, a leading figure in the [[civil rights movement]] was [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], who was called "a modern Moses", and often referred to Moses in his speeches: "The struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought to get out of Egypt. This is something of the story of every people struggling for freedom."<ref>{{cite book | orig-year = 1957, 1968 | quote =I want to preach this morning from the subject, 'The Birth of a New Nation' And I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together, a story that has long since been stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding generations. It is the story of the Exodus, the story of the flight of the Hebrew people from the bondage of Egypt, through the wilderness and finally, to the Promised Land. ... The struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought to get out of Egypt.<p>And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.</p> | last = King | first = Martin Luther Jr. | title = The Papers | publisher = University of California Press | year = 2000 | page = 155}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page