Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise to celebrate Harriet Tubman, one of the most notable individuals in Maryland's history. Congress began officially recognizing March 10th as Harriet Tubman Day in 1990 and I am always grateful to speak to her accomplishments. Throughout her life she served as an abolitionist, soldier, spy and, most famously, as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. I would like to reflect on her contributions to human rights, civil rights, and women's rights in our Nation and to renew my commitment to addressing the shameful legacy of slavery in Maryland and across the U.S.--particularly as it pertains to environmental justice.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross to enslaved parents in Bucktown, Maryland in 1822. After emancipating herself, she dedicated her life to the advancement of freedom and the fight against slavery. Araminta adopted the name ``Harriet'' at the time of her marriage to John Tubman, a free Black man, around the year 1844. Tubman and her husband continued to live in Dorchester County until her escape from slavery in 1849, at the age of 27. She would courageously return to make over thirteen dangerous trips to lead nearly 70 enslaved people seeking freedom, repeatedly risking her life in pursuit of our Nation's highest aspirational ideal.

Throughout the American Civil War, Tubman served the Union at various times as a cook, nurse, scout, and even spy. She helped orchestrate the Combahee River raid in South Carolina that freed over 700 enslaved men, women, and children. After the war's end, Harriet focused her efforts on women's suffrage. In 1908, Tubman established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn, New York. Five years later, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Although she spent her final decades in New York, the marshes and forests of Maryland's Eastern Shore are where Harriet Tubman first grew spiritually and physically strong.

Harriet Tubman made an indelible impact on my State and our Nation's history and I am proud to have played a role in memorializing her story to future generations. I worked to secure the authorities and funding for the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, which tells the story of her life in Dorchester and Caroline counties, and for the Harriet Tubman Underground National Historical Park. The National Park Service administers the national historical park Congress created in December 2014 and the national monument authorized by President Obama in 2013 as a single unit. The Park Service works in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and the State of Maryland, which owns and co- manages the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, to commemorate and interpret Tubman's remarkable story. Visitors can access the marshlands, largely preserved since her time, at the Visitor Center and nearby Refuge. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park centers her life's work not in physical structures, but instead through the landscape in Tubman's native Dorchester County, which we must defend against the social and ecological hazards of climate change.

While climate change is a global issue, it is felt on a local scale. Dorchester County's low-lying landscape of tidal marshes, narrow peninsulas, and country roads linking isolated communities is threatened by sea level rise and land subsidence. Over one-half of the county lies in the 100-year floodplain, much of it in the tidal floodplain; even minor storms and routine high-tide events can flood vast portions of the county. In addition to flooding, saltwater intrusion threatens the failure of rural septic systems, and damage to roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure. Climate- driven changes to the coastal ecosystem are also making it harder to earn a living through the primary local sources of income: agriculture, forestry, and the seafood industry.

Local communities are at the frontline of adaptation, and initial social inequality causes the disadvantaged groups in those communities to suffer disproportionately from the adverse effects of climate change, resulting in greater subsequent inequality. Dorchester County is no exception. After the Civil War, freedmen and women settled the land, which was often less arable and therefore more affordable. Today, the county has a population of 32,000, 26 percent of whom are Black. Black individuals are almost twice as likely to be unemployed or live below the federal poverty level as their white neighbors, attributable to systemic racism that has roots in Harriet Tubman's time of enslavement. The Union of Concerned Scientists developed a Climate Equity Tool to identify communities that face conditions that heighten their vulnerability to harm and are therefore high-risk environmental justice areas, including Dorchester County. UCS projects that the county will see a six-inch rise in sea level by 2030 and 13-inch rise by 2045.

Absent national or international climate policy direction under the Trump administration, cities and towns on the Eastern Shore and around the world have been focusing on solving their own climate problems. They are working to build flood defenses, plan for heatwaves and higher temperatures, install water-permeable pavement to better deal with floods and stormwater, and improve water storage and use. Dorchester County has a flood mitigation plan that identifies projects to protect resources at risk of being lost, including historic and cultural sites. However, implementation of such plans requires significant funding. It is essential that Congress enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities in Dorchester County and across the Eastern Shore--and the Nation--whose residents have been forced to manage periodic flooding and other climate impacts in relative social and political isolation. Frontline communities in Dorchester and neighboring Eastern Shore counties with strong historical and cultural ties require sufficient federal financial and technical assistance now to help plan for the future and make choices about how best to protect themselves from tidal flooding, saltwater intrusion, and coastal disasters.

Environmental justice is an essential component to carry on with respect to the anti-racist work that Harriet Tubman pioneered. The American Rescue Plan Act will provide debt relief and assistance to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers who have faced disproportionate impacts from the pandemic as a result of longstanding discrimination, as well as $50 million in funding to reduce the air pollution that is linked with contributing to COVID-19 deaths, targeted to low income communities and communities of color. These provisions present only a small down payment on the types investments needed to address inequality, and have yet to squarely address climate change.

The local communities on the Eastern Shore that served as Harriet Tubman's training ground in resistance are rarely credited for their outsized influence on Maryland's maritime industry, culture, and environment. We must do better to enshrine their place in our historical consciousness and provide them with the tools necessary to prepare for climate change. I am grateful for the opportunity to showcase the exceptional efforts of one particular Marylander and honor her by pursuing climate and environmental justice policies.

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