A traveling Harriet Tubman Statue makes it’s first stop in SC, in Beaufort

A traveling statue honoring Harriet Tubman made its South Carolina debut earlier this month and will be on display in Beaufort before taking a route the very woman it honors did 160 years ago.

The nine-foot tall bronze statue is titled “The Journey to Freedom” and depicts Tubman protecting and leading a child slave to freedom. It was sculpted by North Carolina artist Wesley Wofford.

It can be found on display outside of the Lowcountry Tourism Commission’s Frampton Plantation House Visitors Center, until July 30, according to the commission’s executive director Peach Morrison.

“The way she’s placed here, she looks like she’s running into the forest,” Morrison said. “Hiding, getting this slave from the field and taking them to freedom. It’s beautiful, powerful. I get goosebumps just talking about it.

On it’s way the statue will follow the real Tubman’s route crossing the Combahee River over the Harriet Tubman Memorial Bridge on Highway 17, which honors her role in the Combahee Ferry Raid of June 1863.

Now on a southern leg of its journey, the statue has traveled up and down the Eastern United States, from Alabama to Rochester, NY. As the statue travels, its strapped to the back of a flatbed 18-wheeler for all interstate travelers to see.

“It’s just such a strong and vibrant symbol of resilience and grit and the things that Harriet had to deal with, the things that the African Americans had to deal with,” Morrison said.