BALTIMORE—In recognition of her 200th birthday, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) held a forum honoring Harriet Tubman’s dedication to freeing Black workers from the vicious grip of slavery, sometimes literally. The rescue story of Charles Nalle, a Black man that Harriet Tubman helped flee from slavery, serves as a powerful example of fighting racist capitalism and wage slavery with multiracial unity. Black women workers have historically exposed the growing contradictions between exploitation and profit, and continue giving frontline leadership in multiracial class struggles that provides a pathway for all workers to  fight for communism.
One key antiracist struggle that’s interconnected with the history of slavery is police terror against Black and Latin workers. To smash racism, bold fighters like Harriet Tubman are models for revolutionary antiracist fightback and for building a multiracial movement for communism. In this area, we have been building a base around an ongoing West Wednesday struggle, stemming from the murder of Tyrone West by Baltimore Police in 2013. Since then PLP has co-led Wednesday night meetings, titled ‘West Wednesdays’ calling out  the kkkops deadly  enforcement of racist class divisions through their racist murder campaigns. Five antiracist fighters involved in the ongoing struggle attended our latest presentation.
One of the most resounding lessons we can learn from Harriet Tubman is the need for boldness. She took many bold actions in the fight against slavery. We will need many similar bold actions in our fight to destroy capitalism. The slave owners and their system had to be violently destroyed, so today capitalists and their imperialist wars will also have to be violently destroyed. One such bold action that’s not well known took place in the North, after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. That national law provided for the seizure and return of enslaved people who had heroically managed to escape, and were living in supposedly “free” states. Here is that true story, which was shared during the forum.
Multiracial fighters liberate Charles
In 1860, Harriet Tubman was traveling throughout central New York State, giving lectures and raising funds. In April, she visited her cousin in Troy, New York, pausing there on her way to an anti-slavery meeting in Boston. Unexpectedly, she found herself in the center of one of the most dramatic rescues ever to occur in central New York.
A formerly enslaved worker, twenty-eight year old Charles Nalle, had been arrested while working to save money for bringing his family there from Pennsylvania, and to get his wife, a free Black woman, out of jail in D.C. where she had been arrested on suspicion of aiding Nalle’s escape from Virginia. Mr. Nalle was going to be turned over to an agent of Blucher Hansbrough—Nalle’s former enslaver—with no hearing and no trial.
As soon as Nalle’s arrest became known, the information was rapidly shared through Troy’s Black community and among white abolitionists. Immediately, people gathered outside the U.S. commissioner’s office, where Nalle was being held.
Tubman happened to be nearby, and joined the crowd that was preparing to rescue Nalle:
She climbed the stairs to where Charles was being held. When the authorities tried to remove Charles from the building to begin to take him away, Harriet Tubman leaned out of a window and alerted the mob below that Charles would be coming down the stairs and that the mob should try to get him away from the authorities. Harriet then held on to Charles as he was pushed and pulled down the stairs. She held on to him even as parts of his clothes were torn off. Local abolitionists Peter Baltimore, Martin Townsend and others also led the charge to rescue Nalle alongside Harriet Tubman (Hart Cluett museum, 2/19/ 21).  
In the fight, Nalle and Tubman were dragged and beaten, as the crowd tried to pry Nalle loose from the cops. Pistols were drawn and one officer threatened to kill a rescuer whom he had grabbed from the crowd. Instantly a knife was drawn under the policeman’s throat, and the pistol was dropped. As the Troy Daily Times reported, “Twenty times the prisoner was taken from the officers, and twenty times they recovered him.” The crowd carried Tubman and Nalle to the Hudson River. Nalle was put in a boat and taken across.
But that wasn’t the denouement. Charles was re-arrested in Watervliet. Then Tubman and a crowd of [300] African Americans and whites together also crossed the river and stormed the building where he was being held for the second time and, through gunfire, liberated him. Ultimately, money was raised to buy his freedom for $650. That was in effect his fourth liberation (The Zinn Education Project).
The boldness, persistence, and multiracial nature of this rescue is admirable.
How have you fought racism?
Participants at the PLP forum were asked “What is your boldest action, or a bold action you are aware of, that was taken in the struggle against racism, or in other class struggles?” Many shared their experiences.
Despite the success of this forum, there is room to grow in leading these types of discussions. There should have been more effort to connect the fight against slavery to the current fight for revolution to defeat capitalism and to create communism.
The life and leadership of Harriet Tubman is still relevant to our current struggle for revolution and, with enough struggle, we can make wage slavery a relic of the past, like Harriet Tubman and fellow abolitionists did with the institution of chattel slavery. When workers are a part of the working class struggle, it changes the lives of all workers - for the better. And if the contradictions of wage theft and racism are not already exposed, communists must be the ones to expose these contradictions and smash racist wage theft. For most effective results – be bold and do it with multiracial unity under the leadership of PLP. Workers today must finish what Tubman started with Black workers leading the way to unleash the true revolutionary potential of our class, transforming antiracist rage and spontaneous rebellions against the police into a class conscious, organized movement to smash the capitalist system and wage slavery once and for all.