Tubman 200
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the ways we think of those who came before us. What lessons might we learn and, more important, how do we position ourselves to honor the diversity of those who have been marginalized for far too long? As a historian of slavery and disability, I have found that Tubman’s disability has helped to nuance my understandings of disabled people’s societal roles historically. She has pushed me to interrogate how power and vulnerability can not only coexist but work together in liberatory ways.
DEIDRE COOPER OWENS has worked with medical schools to change their curriculum to reflect more inclusive and accurate histories of medicine. She is currently writing a biography of Harriet Tubman.
Justice and the Meaning of the Tubman $20 BY KEISHA N. BLAIN
IT IS ONLY FITTING THAT HARRIET TUBMAN SHOULD receive national recognition for her life of service and sacrifice. And the decision to replace the image of President Andrew Jackson with Tubman’s on the $20 bill is a powerful, symbolic gesture. The irony is that her life story brings into bold relief the eco-
nomic struggles Black women face in American society and the cre- ative ways they have managed to use limited material resources to help—and indeed liberate—others. Tubman’s lived experiences re- flect the broader challenges that Black women endured in Ameri- can society—often celebrated, but hardly ever protected. Despite the end of legal slavery in the U.S. in 1865, Black people
remained in a precarious position as they worked to build a new life with few material resources and in the face of much violent resist- ance. A white supremacist and sexist society relegated Black women to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Tubman was no exception. She gave so much to the nation, yet the nation offered so little in return. In the years following the Civil War, Tubman was believed to have struggled to maintain her monthly payments for the property she purchased in Auburn, N.Y. She also assumed fi- nancial responsibility for her parents, extended family and several members of the community. Though she made every effort to overcome it, the economic pre-
carity that shaped Tubman’s life under slavery remained fixed in place in the decades that followed. The headline of a New York Age article from June 8, 1911—“Harriet Tubman Ill and Penniless”— illustrated the difficult circumstances of Tubman’s final years. The article appealed to the public for assistance to help meet the mount- ing bills associated with her care. The fact that Tubman would, at the end of her life, face such dire circumstances serves as a bitter re- minder that celebratory acclaim offers little to meet tangible needs. And while symbolically meaningful, Tubman’s face on a $20 bill
brings us no closer to liberation. This historical development will hold much greater meaning if we commit to addressing the tangi- ble needs of Black women—including better access to quality healthcare, a fair wage, equal opportunity and economic security. Let us work toward making these needs a reality by the time Tubman appears on the redesigned $20.
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KEISHA N. BLAIN is author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom.
38 | SPRING 2022 Read the Series
Check out the rest of the Tubman 200 Project on our website:
msmagazine.com/tubman200.
• Let Me Not Forget: Harriet Tubman’s Enduring Speculative Visions by Michelle D. Commander: “Dismissed by whites as a so-called half-wit, Tubman remained quite circumspect about sharing the content of the premonitions. … Tubman took seriously these moments of acute intuition by engaging in conjurations, using disguises to facilitate her movements across treacherous conditions, and embracing a code of silence as she moved covertly throughout slave territory to freedom and back again.”
• ‘Harriet’ and the Combahee River Raid by Edda L. Fields-Black: “Tubman was the first woman in U.S. history to lead an armed military raid because she was ‘captain of a gang of men who [piloted] the union forces into the enemy’s country’ and she ‘piloted Colonel [James] Montgomery on his most successful expedition.’”
• The Sound World of Harriet Tubman by Maya Cunningham: “The longue durée of Tubman’s story in my life set me on the trajectory to be able to explore the songs she sang, and the sound world in which she lived, so that we can better understand her life.”
• Why Video Games Education Needs Harriet Tubman by Rebecca Rouse and Amy Corron: “What’s Harriet Tubman got to do with video games? … As game design educators we found impact in bridging these two subjects in our own classroom. Centering Tubman in our course has helped in our ongoing project to develop feminist and anti-racist game design education.”
• The Two Harriets by Jonathan Michael Square: “A recently discovered photograph from the 1860s is the earliest known photo of Tubman, and it captures her in a different phase of her life, when she may have been more fashion conscious … allowing us to see her as a more complex human being.”
• Harriet Tubman in the Art of Faith Ringgold by Michele Wallace: “Faith (my mother) is a fabulist whose real interest is in projecting her ideas into the future. I have realized that for some time, but what in the world could there be to celebrate about slavery? I will tell you what there is to celebrate: Harriet Tubman.”
• Using Archaeology to Rediscover Harriet Tubman’s Life in Freedomby Douglas V. Armstrong: “Tubman’s contributions did not stop with emancipation. Archaeological studies at the Harriet Tubman Home illuminate her lifelong struggle for social justice and women’s rights.”
www.feminist.org
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