August 2, 1859 — New England Colored Citizens’ Convention, Meionaon Hall (Tremont Temple), Boston MA

[Introduced to the audience as “one of the most successful conductors on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Garrison, she denounced the colonization movement and told the story . . . ]

. . . of a man who sowed onions and garlic on his land to increase his dairy productions; but he soon found the butter was strong and would not sell, and so he concluded to sow clover instead. But he soon found the wind had blown the onions and garlic all over his field. Just so, the white people had got the nigger here to do their drudgery, and now they were trying to root ‘em out and send ‘em back to Africa. But they can’t do it; we’re rooted here, and they can’t pull us up.

Source: The Liberator, August 26, 1859, p. 4.

Also: Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, by Kate Clifford Larson (New York: Random House), 2009, p. 173.