Annabella Vargas-Figueroa read a book passage about iconic abolitionist Harriet Tubman to the famous former Auburn resident’s great-great grandniece.
Annabella, 8, read a section of “She Persisted,” an illustrated children’s book about different women who impacted the world, that focuses on Tubman to Tubman’s relative Pauline Copes Johnson at the visitor center of the Harriet Tubman Home Saturday.
Annabella was one of a group of around 30 people who visited the home as a part of a tour with the New York Poor People’s Campaign, part of a national effort to address issues such as poverty, systemic racism, the war economy and ecological destruction while embracing diverse groups of people. The Rev. Emily McNeill, executive director for the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State, said the tour through various parts of the state was on day three of four. McNeill said the group had been visiting sites connected to the abolitionist movement. To keep a social movement successful, she said, people must learn from the past and efforts regarding these same issues from the past.
McNeill said the campaign’s purpose is to “unite and organize the poor and disposed all across the country” and to “make sure we’re bringing people all across the different lines that have been used to divide people.”
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