Conservatives should be delighted that Harriet Tubman’s likeness will grace the $20 bill. She was a Republican, after all, and a pious Christian. And she routinely exercised her Second Amendment right to carry a gun, which she was ready to use against anyone who stood in her way — or any fugitive slave having second thoughts. On her long road to freedom, there was no turning back.
That is the opening paragraph of this magnificent column in today’s Washington Post by the inimitable Eugene Robinson, whose title I have borrowed for this post.
He uses his opening to tweak the Conservatives who have responded either in silence or with objections, including the suggestions by Donald Trump and Ben Carson that Tubman instead be put on the $2, which almost no one uses, and which Robinson rightly notes “would be a great recipe for tokenism.”
Robinson has a further response:
It matters who’s on the money. Since the ancient Greeks began stamping coins with images of their gods, nations have used currency to define a pantheon of heroes. Tubman was a great hero not because of who she was but what she did: bravely fight to expand the Constitution’s promise of freedom and justice to all Americans.
Critics who polluted social media with invective after Lew’s announcement seemed to look past Tubman’s deeds and focus on her identity. Yes, she was a black woman. If anyone can’t deal with that fact, and doesn’t want to use the new bills when they finally come out, feel free to send them to me.
And i might add, if you don’t want to send them to Robinson, I can think of a lot of worthy causes that could use some additional financial help!
For those who do not know her history, Robinson provides a brief overview, cramming into the space of one a column a lot of information. She of course is best known for the Underground Railroad, of which she said and Robinson quotes
“I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” she said later in life, “and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
But there is more, there is a piece of history that ALL Americans should know:
During the Civil War, she guided a team of Union scouts operating in the marshlands near present-day Beaufort, S.C. In 1863, she led a raid on plantations along the Combahee River that freed more than 750 slaves — becoming, apparently, the first woman to lead U.S. troops in an armed assault.
Later in life she worked with Susan B. Anthony and others on behalf of woman’s suffrage. She lived into the 20th Century, dying in 1913.
Robinson takes on the notion that this action by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is an example of political correctness. Yes it is, and he says it is high time, too.
I have already pushed fair use. So I am not going to quote all of Robinson’s final two paragraphs, in part because I want to encourage you to go and read the entire column.
You will encounter the notion of expanding the meaning of “we the people” in a way that those of us over a certain age will inevitably be reminded of the powerful words of Barbara Jordan at the opening of the impeachment hearings for Richard Nixon in the House Judiciary Committee.
Especially at a time when several of the candidates of the other party are using appeals that seem intended to roll back much of the progress we have seen in our nation in the past half century plus, reminding us of the effort of so many to obtain more liberty and rights for so many more are important. It is not just that White men decided to give rights to those not White me, it is that others demanded those rights for themselves and the others who had been excluded.
Harriet Tubman worked to free slaves, and for the right of women for full political participation, in a period of time about a century later than Abigail Adams had written her husband John to “remember the ladies.” We did not fully address female suffrage on a national level until ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. It took the 1965 Voting Rights Act to begin, finally, almost a century after the 15th Amendment, to begin to more fully include people of color as citizens with complete political rights.
We as Democrats should be very mindful of both of the movements for which Harriet Tubman gave so much effort: after all, without Blacks and women we would definitely be a party without political power.
It is also timely that as we complete the term of our first Black President with the increasingly likelihood of our first Female President that we can look back to one Black woman who did so much for so many.
She is not alone. There was Sojourner Truth. Later there would be Rosa Parks. Still later there would be Fannie Lou Hamer. And of course in my lifetime I remember the extraordinary moral witness of Barbara Jordan.
Our history should be more inclusive. Perhaps if we reclaim it fully, we will be more comfortable with an America that is increasingly diverse, which is no longer just a nation of White men in government, industry, the arts, sports, power.
And thus it is appropriate that I amend my previous decision, push fair use a bit, because the final paragraph of Robinson’s column is so appropriate to this line of thinking:
By definition, the study of history requires interpretation and assessment. The many vital contributions made by black people, women and other “outsiders” were long overlooked or undervalued. We are now able to see Tubman through a sharper lens, and she was magnificent.
Yes she was.
Peace.