Tag Archives: Civil Rights

Harriet Tubman and the 20-Dollar Bill Controversy

By Sabrina Völz

Pub­lic Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61139114

Mere days after Joe Biden was sworn in as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, the new admin­is­tra­tion announced its inten­tion to put Har­ri­et Tub­man – known as Moses – on the twen­ty-dol­lar bill. The cur­ren­cy redesign – a rel­a­tive­ly com­mon occur­rence in the 19th cen­tu­ry – was orig­i­nal­ly set for release in 2020 to mark the cen­ten­ni­al of the 19th Amend­ment that grant­ed women the right to vote. The major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans sup­port­ed the redesign in 2016 when the last poll on the issue was tak­en. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump put the project on hold, cit­ing secu­ri­ty issues and attribut­ing the Oba­ma ini­tia­tive to sheer polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. While Trump may still view Andrew Jack­son as an Amer­i­can hero, his­to­ri­ans are quick to point out the com­plex­i­ties of the for­mer U.S. president’s biog­ra­phy. Jack­son owned hun­dreds of slaves and was respon­si­ble for the Indi­an Removal Act that led to the death of about 4,000 Chero­kees, forced to walk from the South­ern states to mod­ern-day Okla­homa on what is now referred to as the Trail of Tears. Even though he prob­a­bly should be, Jack­son will not be com­plete­ly removed from the twen­ty-dol­lar bill – he’ll just be demot­ed to the back. The irony of plac­ing Tub­man on one side and Jack­son on the oth­er on a sym­bol of nation­al iden­ti­ty has not gone unno­ticed and cer­tain­ly speaks to the divi­sion in Amer­i­can soci­ety today.

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The Long March to Justice

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Pho­to Cred­it: “Mia­mi Protest, June 7, 2020” by Mike Shaheen

When I was five years old, I announced my new dis­cov­ery: “Negroes (the polite term at the time) are bad.” My par­ents tried to cor­rect me, but I felt my log­ic was unshak­able: When the radio report­ed a crime, the per­pe­tra­tor was often black. They nev­er said that a sus­pect was white. I didn’t know any black peo­ple in our seg­re­gat­ed town, but I knew many white peo­ple, and none of them were crim­i­nals. This was an open-and-shut case in my five-year old’s mind.

A few weeks lat­er, my father took me down­town to see a parade. He struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with a black woman we were stand­ing next to. She had a baby, who cap­tured my inter­est, though I was more entranced by her Kraft Caramels (my favorite can­dy at the time) she shared gen­er­ous­ly with me. This, of course, com­plete­ly shat­tered my baby bigotry.

When I was approach­ing mid­dle age, I reflect­ed on the inci­dent. Only then did I real­ize that when I was young, parade-view­ing areas – as well as every­thing else – were strict­ly seg­re­gat­ed in Enid, Okla­homa. It must have tak­en some plan­ning and more than a small amount of courage to arrange for us to stand in the “col­ored area” next to a friend­ly woman who just hap­pened to have a cute baby and my favorite candies.

The issue of race did not come up often in our small, most­ly white town (at least not in the white com­mu­ni­ty), so I had lit­tle need to reflect on what I had learned until Emmett Till’s mur­der on August 28, 1955, made nation­al news and pro­voked nation­al outrage.

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