By Rev. Dr. Ossie McKinney
When I walked into the remaining home on Harriet Tubman’s property in Auburn, New York, I did not expect to feel at home. But I did.
The wood floors creaked in familiar ways. The iron bed reminded me of beds I had seen growing up. There was even an old iron that looked like the kind my family once used as a doorstop. And the quilt rack on the wall took me straight back to my mother, who quilted for years and placed handmade quilts on every bed in our home.
Nothing about the house felt polished or untouchable. It did not feel like a museum asking visitors to admire history from a distance. It felt lived in. Welcoming. Like a place where someone could finally exhale.
As I stood there, I found myself imagining what freedom must have felt like inside those walls. Not freedom as an idea. Not freedom written into law. But freedom as rest. Freedom as dignity. Freedom as finally entering a space where you did not have to shrink yourself to survive.
The house seemed to whisper: “Come in and make yourself at home, for you are free. Free to be fully yourself here. You have dignity here. You have worth here.”
The home did not contain the finest things. But it held what was necessary. Just enough. And somehow, that “just enough” felt holy. It felt like a place where care had been cultivated over time. A place where dignity was protected and people were welcomed. Long before I had language for it, I was standing inside a home that had been tending freedom.
Harriet Tubman’s property
A few hours later, I walked through the Seward House.
Unlike Harriet’s home, this one announced itself immediately. Status. Wealth. Original furnishings still in place. Portraits, drapery, carved woodwork and polished rooms. The kind of home that communicates importance before anyone speaks.
It was beautiful. But formal. A home where you instinctively wondered where to sit, what to touch and how to behave.
And yet it was in the Seward House basement and kitchen that I felt myself pulled most deeply into the reality of what freedom actually required.
The kitchen still carried traces of another era. Standing there, I could almost see freedom seekers gathered near the basement stove, soaking in warmth after dangerous travel. I could imagine the whispers. The exhaustion. The fear.
“Will we be caught?”
“Is it really safe here?”
“Can someone hear us down here?”
In that moment, Juneteenth stopped feeling distant and ceremonial to me. It became human.
I realized freedom did not travel alone. Liberation moved through networks. Through people willing to open doors. Through those willing to use their homes, their resources and their reputations as shelter. Harriet Tubman’s courage mattered deeply. But so did the existence of places where weary travelers could rest for a moment without fear.
Standing near that stove, I realized that freedom seekers needed more than escape routes. They needed people who would tend the fire. Tend the shelter. Tend hope itself until the danger had passed. That caused me to think differently about Frances Seward.
The Seward House Museum in Auburn, N.Y.
The Sewards’ social standing and political influence became a kind of cloak for freedom work. Who would dare openly question the home of a senator, a governor or a Secretary of State? Their privilege created cover. Their position created protection. They could not lead what Harriet led. But they could hold the door open.
Liberation, I was learning, often requires more than brave individuals. It requires communities willing to risk comfort and leverage influence so that others might live more freely.
Juneteenth itself carries this tension.
The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued more than two years before Union troops arrived in Texas on June 19, 1865 and publicly enforced what had already been declared. Freedom had been announced. But not everybody had received the news. And even for those who had, the announcement was not yet a life.
Perhaps that tension still speaks.
Even after slavery formally ended, Black communities still had to build lives. Create safety. Establish schools. Care for elders. Protect one another. Fight for dignity in a country that kept resisting their full humanity.
Harriet Tubman understood that. That is why her work did not end with escape routes and rescues. In Auburn, she built a life rooted in care, refuge and community. She understood that liberation was not only about helping people reach freedom. It was also about helping freedom take root. She kept tending.
Looking back, I realized I had seen that truth all day. I saw it in Harriet’s modest home. I saw it in the warmth of the kitchen where freedom seekers found shelter. I saw it in the networks of people who opened doors and shared resources so others could live more freely.
As I walked the grounds in Auburn, I kept asking myself: What does it mean that freedom still needs tending?
It means freedom is not a moment. It is a practice.
It means the declaration is never enough on its own. Someone has to make sure it reaches the people it was meant for. Someone has to build the school, open the door, hold the space and keep the warmth going.
It means some of us are called to be the kitchen.
And some of us are called to tend the kitchen.
Freedom is not simply declared.
It must be nurtured.
Protected.
Shared.
Extended.
Lived into together.
Harriet Tubman’s home did not have the finest things. But it felt like dignity lived there. And perhaps that is part of what liberation means.
Not simply being told you are free.
But finally having a place where you can rest like you are.
Rev. Dr. Ossie McKinney serves as Director of Research and Administration for Outreach and Growth with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and provides research leadership for the Dr. Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice and Leadership Initiative. A worship leader, scholar, and storyteller, she explores the intersection of faith, justice, history and formation