How Would Harriet Tubman Navigate Social Media and Information Control?

If I could read and write in your time, I would use every tool to spread the truth. I would shout the names of those still in bondage from whatever platform would have me. I would document what I saw with whatever devices you use to capture light and memory. Truth-telling is truth-telling, whether carved into stone or sent through the air into every pocket.

But I would also warn you — with the urgency I would have warned you about patrollers in the night.

Your tools are powerful, but they are owned by masters just as surely as the plantation was owned. Those masters decide what you see, what you do not see, what stories rise and what stories sink into silence. They profit from your attention and your fear. They show you what keeps you looking, not always what is true or what matters most.

In my time, we had to learn to read between the lies — to know when a white newspaper called a fugitive a criminal, we might be reading about a hero. To know when they called resistance terrorism, they might be describing courage. You must do the same work now, but the lies move faster and hide better in your endless stream of information.

I would tell you: Do not mistake information for wisdom. Do not mistake being connected for understanding. Use the tools, yes — to find real news, to organize, to speak names into existence that powerful people want forgotten. But also look into the faces of real people around you. Build community in physical places where you can see and touch one another. That cannot be controlled or censored.

The most dangerous lie your masters tell is that you are powerless. That the systems are too large. That your voice does not matter. I lived in a time when every law, every institution, every newspaper told enslaved people they were nothing. Yet we built the Underground Railroad from whispers and faith and one person telling another person the truth.

Your information age can be a weapon or a chain. Choose which one you make of it.