“Of course I embellished, I’m a screenwriter,” said Lemmons, who wrote the script with Gregory Allen Howard. “I added to the story because anybody that’s a writer that approaches a real story has to embellish.”

Since Tubman never learned to read or write, details about her life come largely from first- and second-hand accounts. Lemmons’ primary sources were Tubman biographies, including “Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman,” written in 1869 by Tubman’s abolitionist friend Sarah Bradford. Written to raise money for Tubman and her cause, the book often embellished Tubman’s stories to make them more thrilling and therefore marketable.

Lemmons also relied on Kate Clifford Larson’s 2004 “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero,” which uses a trove of documents and sources as well as genealogical data to paint a portrait of Tubman and her times. She also read academic papers on Tubman and the Underground Railroad, and accessed first-hand accounts from abolitionists who were “entertained” by Tubman’s “kind of one-woman show” in her twilight years.

What Lemmons wanted to avoid, however, was an aspect of myth-making that threatened to make Tubman more legend than human. After her death, Tubman, born Araminta “Minty” Ross, was mostly relegated to the ranks of children’s literature. She was often pictured as an old, stately woman, drawn from formal photos that were taken near the end of her life.

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