Underground Season 2 Episode 6: "Minty" Quotes
The first thing I knew, was to be afraid of white men.
Harriet
To tell you how I came to be free, first you gotta understand what bondage was like for me. How it attacks the senses. The sound of it. the crack of a whip like thunder. The feel of it...like you could barely take a full breath. The taste of it, like all your teeth, are made of copper. the smell of it. The fade in stench of everybody sold away; and the look of it, every eye turned down to the ground away from the horror.
Harriet
There was nobody better at turning an eye then the real Harriet, my mama. She worked u pon the house and she was well versed in the way of white folks. How to judge their moods; how to move through they space like a spirit; how to listen and remember secrets that might be of use later. Her lessons would be helpful once I started moving cargo, but in the meantime, I had no use for it.
A dead slave ain't worth nothin'.
Harriet
Black folk, we know pain. Known it a long time. I got more scars on my body than I can count.
Harriet
I took up that broom once more, then again [thumps podium]. I never cried out once. I wouldn't give Ms. Suan the satisfaction. That's how I learned to love the pain. Er'time I got hit, I took it as an opportunity...for defiance. To not give anyone the reaction they expected. Then, I thought again, maybe that there was freedom. But I couldn't reconcile why something everybody held so precious come from pain. There had to be an easier way to it than that.
Harriet
One morning, Ms. Susan and her husband got in an ugly screaming match. While they scream and scream, I just wait. My eyes glued on a bowl on the table. you know what was in it? Lumps of pure, white sugar. [Crowd laughs] When Mistress back was turned, I moved reaaal slow. Reached my hand right into that sugar bowl, took just one lump...and that old bat must have heard me because she had the rawhide down coming like a storm. I gave one jump out that door and I flew. I ran and I ran. Sugar melting on my tongue never ain't tasted so good in my life. I ran and I didn't know where I was going. I ain't have nowhere to go, but it didn't matter in that moment! 'Cause I had just stolen what joy I could and that, that, that felt like freedom!
Harriet
If you ask anybody about little Minty, that's what they called me back then, they'd say I was the most rebellious thing. Mischievous, too, and I took pride in that, knowing that they didn't own me in spirit.
Harriet
Oh Lord, if you ain't gonna change that man's heart, then kill him, Lord, and take him out the way.
Harriet
Just because you believe something doesn't mean anybody else read to.
Harriet
Ain't but a mile and they was ready to give up. I meant to keep on, but they dragged me back. That was the last time I convinced anybody to run. That freedom fire, that ain't something that can be stoked in someone else, and embers ain't enough.
Harriet
I seen a wildfire once when I was young. I stood right at the edge of it with my daddy. I stared at it a long time and still I don't got the words to describe it. the heat, the harm of activity, the relentless power and flames consuming everything in its path. That's how you got to burn for freedom, wild like, ready to scorch and doubt in your path 'cause that's what it's gonna take. My brothers didn't have it, not yet, but I did. And wasn't nobody gonna stop me at this point. This time I was gonna go at it alone.
Harriet
