Actress Diane Faison to bring ‘The Spirit of Harriet Tubman’ to life in Asheboro show

Diane Faison as Harriet Tubman

ASHEBORO – Experience history through “The Spirit of Harriet Tubman” as actress Diane Faison brings the famed abolitionist to life in a performance at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 9, at the George Washington Carver Community Enrichment Center (GWCCEC), 950 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Asheboro

The one-woman show is sponsored by the Friends of the Randolph County Public Libraries and the GWCCEC. The performance is free and the public is invited.

Tubman, born in 1822, escaped a brutal existence as an enslaved person to found the Underground Railroad and advocate tirelessly for abolition. She led troops in the United States Army during the Civil War, and afterwards became an advocate for women’s suffrage.

Faison, an art teacher in North Carolina and Virginia for 25 years, wanted students to feel history, rather than just researching it. She studied Tubman’s life and developed her one-woman play, which her husband, a history teacher, asked her to perform for his students.

Since then, she has performed multiple times each month for close to 30 years in schools, colleges, libraries, churches and retirement homes.

Faison, who resides in Winston-Salem, holds a bachelors of arts in art appreciation from North Carolina Central University. She has received grants from the Winston-Salem and Alamance arts councils, and the Puffin Foundation.