Editing Moses (section)

==== Slavery and civil rights ====
[[Underground Railroad]] conductor and [[American Civil War]] veteran [[Harriet Tubman]] was nicknamed "Moses" due to her various missions in freeing and ferrying escaped enslaved persons to freedom in the free states of the [[United States]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clinton |first=Catherine |author-link=Catherine Clinton |year=2004 |title=Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom |location=New York |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |isbn=0-316-14492-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/harriettubmanroa00clin}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=Joyce Stokes |last1=Jones |first2=Michele Jones |last2=Galvin |title=Beyond the Underground: Aunt Harriet, Moses of Her People |year=1999–2012 |publisher=Sankofa Media |isbn=978-0-9895755-0-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-asngEACAAJ}}</ref>

Historian Gladys L. Knight describes how leaders who emerged during and after the period in which [[slavery in the United States|slavery]] was legal often personified the Moses symbol. "The symbol of Moses was empowering in that it served to amplify a need for freedom."<ref>{{cite book |last=Knight |first=Gladys L. |title=Icons of African American Protest |volume=I |publisher=Greenwood |year=2009 |page=183}}</ref> Therefore, when [[Abraham Lincoln]] was [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln|assassinated in 1865]] after the passage of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|amendment to the Constitution outlawing slavery]], [[Black Americans]] said they had lost "their Moses".<ref>{{cite book |first=Martha |last=Hodes |title=Mourning Lincoln |url=https://archive.org/details/mourninglincoln0000hode |url-access=registration |year=2015 |publisher=Yale University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/mourninglincoln0000hode/page/164 164], 237 |isbn=978-0-300-21356-0}}</ref> Lincoln biographer [[Charles Carleton Coffin]] writes, "The millions whom Abraham Lincoln delivered from slavery will ever liken him to Moses, the deliverer of Israel."<ref>{{cite book |last=Coffin |first=Charles Carleton |title=Abraham Lincoln |publisher=Ulan Press |type=reprint |orig-year=1893 |year=2012 |page=534}}</ref>

[[Martin Luther King Jr.]], a leader of the [[civil rights movement]] during the 1960s, was called "a modern Moses", and often referred to Moses in his speeches: "The struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought to get out of Egypt. This is something of the story of every people struggling for freedom."<ref>{{cite book |orig-year=1957, 1968 |quote=I want to preach this morning from the subject, 'The Birth of a New Nation'  And I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together, a story that has long since been stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding generations. It is the story of the Exodus, the story of the flight of the Hebrew people from the bondage of Egypt, through the wilderness and finally, to the Promised Land. ... The struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought to get out of Egypt.<p>And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.</p> |last=King |first=Martin Luther Jr. |title=The Papers |publisher=University of California Press |year=2000 |page=155}}</ref>