So it was that Tubman found himself in New York in late October 1954, mulling over his choices. Did he risk a misstep by visiting the Deep South, famous the world over for its segregation and racial intolerance?
Back home, he was the undisputed leader of the ruling class, the architect of the Unification Policy who had a firm grip on the speed and scope of the country's integration.
Here in America, his color put him on the other side of the game. No longer king, he was made to feel more like a pawn.
He had to consider the political consequences of returning to his family's American home. Would it make him appear chummy with the white Americans who desired to keep his black cousins in their place?
Already he was tiring of being paraded around New York, where Gov. Thomas Dewey, who was seeking re-election, prevailed upon Tubman to spend considerable time visiting with him.
Tubman was disturbed and embarrassed, according to sources close to him, that he was having to defer to Dewey and postpone or cancel long-awaited visits with Eleanor Roosevelt and Adam Clayton Powell, a civil rights leader and U.S. representative.
The source explained to The New York Times that Tubman felt, as a visitor in New York state, he ought to comply. Furthermore, he was anxious not to jeopardize the U.S. aid and development deals he was pursuing.
But Liberia had no sensitive business interests in Georgia, just slave cousins from long ago.
"Mr. Tubman is under heavy pressure from his advisors and well wishers to cancel an official visit to Georgia ... and go to the state as an unofficial guest so that Mr. Talmadge might not be able to officially slight him because of his race," wrote the Atlanta Daily World.
"A close aide of the president told a reporter ... however: 'We can't do a thing. He is determined to go there and it looks as if he is going officially.' "
In a feat of political gymnastics, Talmadge had invited Tubman to visit Georgia - but not as his personal guest. Tubman had asked for an invitation from Talmadge to avoid breaching protocol, and one was granted. But Talmadge would be elsewhere in the state that weekend, dedicating a hospital.
For weeks, the black press in Atlanta had been following Tubman's American adventure. The Atlanta Daily World had sent a reporter along with his entourage to various events and speaking engagements, which made front-page news back home.
The black community was full of anticipation for one of their own to return home - to the very city where his mother had been born a slave - as a conquering hero. The president of black Africa's only independent nation was a brother; he might even be their cousin.
Finally, he was coming home.
A visit to Atlanta
Among headlines in the Atlanta Journal on Friday, Nov. 5, 1954, such as "Freeze Tonight," "Hunting OK in 4 More Areas" and "Pretty Girl, 15, Found Slain," one read "Tubman To Arrive Here Today."
His train, with two specially outfitted private cars, had carried him to Terminal Station in Atlanta shortly after midnight Thursday from Alabama, where he had visited Tuskegee Institute.
At 8:30 a.m. on the east end of the station, newsmen gathered with Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield, Atlanta University President Rufus Clement - Tubman's official host - and Dr. Benjamin Mayes of Morehouse College.
Tubman emerged from the rail car to greet the crowd and was about to place his feet on Georgia soil - the soil his ancestors had tilled for a white man's benefit - for the first time. The crack of gunfire split the cold air.
Tubman flinched.
Instinctively, a half-dozen or so police and security officers flashed their hands to their belts and drew their pistols.
Where did it come from?
It was a shot, wasn't it?
Raw nerves were soothed when they determined that the "shot" had been a photographer's flashbulb exploding. Tubman didn't comment on the incident, but the reporters agreed that the "unscheduled excitement" was a less than ceremonious way to welcome the African president.
But the photographers kept shooting, and Tubman - along with almost everybody else - spent the moment trying to rid himself of his startled look.
He greeted the official party from behind a pair of chest-high microphones, telling Hartsfield that he was thrilled to return to the land of his forebears. They announced that they would not hold a news conference there, but rather at Dr. Clement's home later.
"It's cold here, man," he said while declining an interview request, grinning and shivering.
Later, at the news conference, Tubman would continue to make news by refusing to comment on the recent Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, as he had since landing in New York.
And when one reporter asked him if there were any segregation problems in Liberia, he said, "None whatever."
An overflow crowd gathered at the Sisters Chapel at Spelman College to see and hear Tubman. Students, alumni, faculty and community leaders filled every available seat and spilled into the aisles and hallways.
Among them was a young man from Augusta - future Mayor Edward McIntyre, a junior at Morehouse College that year. He and his smartly dressed classmates - "Morehouse guys wear shirt and ties," raps McIntyre today - would assemble that day as they did every day for required chapel.
His classmates included future Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and civil rights activist Julian Bond.
"Most of the students in the Atlanta Center very rarely went to downtown Atlanta because we didn't want to accept segregation. On the Southside, you had everything you needed. You had your movie houses. You had all your cultural programs on campus."
On Sunday afternoon, McIntyre and his mates might gather at Paschal's for a chicken sandwich - just 52 cents including tax and a scoop of potato salad - or they might meet up for sausage splits and pitchers of beer - and their famous rap sessions at their favorite bar, the Draft Board.
"In Atlanta, it was truly the South, with segregation and discrimination at its height," McIntyre recalls.
That morning, Tubman was awarded two honorary degrees, a doctor of humane letters from Morehouse and a doctor of laws from Atlanta University. That brought to nine the number of doctorates Tubman had received in his three weeks in America.
He had never been to college himself - a constant source of wonder for people who heard him speak and were convinced that he had studied in America or Britain, remembers Jimmy Barrolle, his butler.
"I am profoundly touched," said Tubman, "that it was from Georgia that the guiding hand of Providence moved my forebears to emigrate to Liberia and cast their lots with the people in that part of Africa...
"I am reminded of the many other men and women of this country who abandoned forever the scenes of the childhood and all that was dear and precious to them to go to Africa, the land of their origin, and sacrifice even their lives in the founding of that country."
"I am also happy to learn of the great contributions those of you of African descent, who have remained here, have made to the growth and prosperity of the United States," Tubman said.
He would spend that afternoon, and some time again the next morning, on a whirlwind tour of the points of pride and progress in the Sweet Auburn community: the Citizen's Trust Co. bank, the Atlanta Life Insurance Co. home office, the Atlanta Daily World newspaper, the Butler Street YMCA - where he was given a citation of merit from the Atlanta Business League and a $5,000 donation to take to the YMCA chapter in Liberia on behalf of the boys and girls of Atlanta.
"The Negro youth was blessed with the opportunity of mingling with the head of an African Republic," opined the Atlanta Daily World. "And not soon if ever will that stern face, so full of character and determination, be forgotten."
That night, Tubman and his entourage were welcomed with a dinner in the formal reception room of the Morehouse College Chemistry Building, where the formally attired hostesses beamed and the tables were set with "handsome silver, crystal and China," according to Ozeil Fryer Woolcock's society column in the World.
Saturday afternoon, as most of the state's eyes and ears were on the Georgia-Florida football game in Jacksonville - the Bulldogs and Gators were ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the Southeastern Conference going in - Tubman sat through Xavier's 45-7 shellacking of the hometown Clark College Panthers, who dropped to 1-6 on the season.
But what he did while visiting Georgia isn't what mattered most to the people he met. What was meaningful was the simple fact that Tubman was present among them - a living monument to their hopes for their own future.
Little did his hosts realize that their southside Atlanta community was much more advanced, in some ways, than his African home. When Tubman had taken office 10 years earlier, there weren't even flush toilets in the executive mansion in Monrovia.
But none of that mattered as the finely mannered and well-spoken leader walked and talked among them.
"My feeling was a feeling of pride and uplifting," remembers McIntyre, "because here was a black president of a country. It gave you a sense of saying, this can happen one day, maybe, in America.
"And to see this man of stature as president, it was overwhelming."
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