In celebration of Black History Month, Lakewood Historical Society and Clover Park School District will present “A Visit with Aunt Harriet Tubman” Feb. 17 at Clover Park High School Performing Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public, and students are encouraged to attend.

Portraying 92-year-old Tubman will be Karol Brown, who has been entertaining and teaching audiences as Tubman for more than a decade. Her husband James Brown plays Brother Ely, a caretaker of Tubman’s who leads audiences on a vicarious journey back to 1912 to visit with the woman who came to be called the Moses of her people.

Brown said she was inspired to study Tubman after seeing the 1978 film “A Woman Called Moses” in which the venerable Cicely Tyson played the lead role. As Brown told it, “I went and researched and started learning so much about her that I felt like I wanted to share her life with people.” Having been very close to her own grandmother who lived to be 101 years old, Brown said this led her to portray Tubman as a gentle, grandmotherly type of person in her sunset years.

“It’s as close to meeting Harriet Tubman as you will ever be.”

As Aunt Harriet and Brother Ely, the Browns travel far and wide throughout the state. Involved with Humanities Washington’s Inquiring Minds Program, the couple takes their show on the road to schools, universities, museums, or anywhere they’re asked. February is their busiest month. “In the past 10 years we’ve been to the four corners of the state. And we get to work together too,” Karol Brown said, nodding to her husband of more than 20 years. “It’s a good combination.”

At each performance Brother Ely welcomes the audience while Aunt Harriet waits in the wings. Mentioning several historical events of the early 1900s, Brother Ely sets the stage to put in context Tubman’s significant mark on history. A tenor who developed his strong singing voice at church, Brown leads audiences through several Negro Spirituals that in their day doubled as songs with hidden messages about the Underground Railroad like “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Steal Away.”

Most know Tubman for her daring feats on the Underground Railroad, the fearless woman who returned to the south after being freed to lead other slaves to freedom on foot through countless dangers (and she never lost one passenger). Tubman also worked for the Union Army when the American Civil War began, first as a cook and nurse, then as an armed scout and spy. She was the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, and helped liberate nearly 800 slaves. Later she worked in the women’s suffrage movement, and cared for her aging parents until their death.

Despite being severely whipped and beaten at the hands of slave owners and suffering a serious head injury when she was an adolescent that plagued her throughout her life, Tubman’s spirit was never broken. Her fervent religious faith buoyed her through all her trials. She was a steadfast family woman as well, which Karol Brown said endears Tubman all the more to her heart. “She cared for others and not herself. She’d happily go ask for something someone else needed, but she would go without,” Brown said.

“Some people, at first, when they hear about Harriet Tubman think I’m going to talk about slavery and they’re going to feel bad, but people feel good afterwards when they find out she was an American heroine who dedicated her life to people.”

James Brown said he has always thought of Harriet Tubman as being a saint because of her willingness to offer the ultimate sacrifice for others: her own life. “She did the ultimate thing. They say there’s no better friend than the one who would lay their life on the line for you, and so that’s what she did over and over.

“She’s an example of someone you could pattern your own life after.”

A health care professional by day, Karol Brown has something special planned on March 10, which is Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and was established in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush as also being Harriet Tubman Day. Concerned over escalating HIV/AIDS among African Americans, the Browns have put together a special performance “Harriet Tubman: Woman of Action,” which will be staged at Theater on the Square at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., as a fundraiser for Pierce County AIDS Foundation’s Unity Now program. Tickets are $15, available at the Broadway Center Box Office (9th and Broadway), at (253) 591-5894 or at www.VisitHarrietTubman.com.

“I feel like the type of woman she was who could call people to action would be good way to open the door to the conversation about HIV/AIDS that in the African-American population has a lot of stigma to it; people don’t talk about it,” Karol Brown said. “I see her life being another way of encouraging and empowering people - a woman of action.”

For more information on Lakewood Historical Society, visit www.lakewoodhistorical.org.