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Harriet Tubman Monument Getting National Attention

CAMBRIDGE, Md. (WJZ) -- Harriet Tubman, who was born a slave on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is memorialized in her hometown of Dorchester County.

Jessica Kartalija explains how the memorial is getting national attention.

Wednesday, a member of the president's cabinet designated a memorial in Tubman's honor.

It's a beautiful landscape, and now a historical landmark.

The president designated the new Harriet Tubman Underground Monument a national monument this week.

"We stand on the shoulders of giants like Harriet Tubman and Colonel Charles Young and Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and so many others that have brought us to the place we are today," said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

Salazar says the landmark commemorates the life of the most famous conductor on the underground railroad, who helped slaves escape to freedom.

"It was her family that kept her returning over and over and over again to free them. Just with her being free was not enough," said Patricia Ross Hawkins, Tubman relative.

The Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge Center in Cambridge is part of the new national monument.

"You get to walk out and see the marshlands of Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. Explore the landscape in which she lived, worked and escaped," said Camila Clark, Office of Tourism.

The monument is expected to bring tourists and jobs to Dorchester County.

"This is just the world recognizing that she deserves national and international recognition for all the good that she's done," said Victoria Jackson Stanley, Mayor of Cambridge.

Tubman was born in Dorchester County and spent nearly 30 years there as a slave.

The monument in Tubman's honor is one of five national monuments established this week by President Obama.

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