Transcripts For CSPAN3 Harriet Tubman And The Twenty Dollar Bill 20161102

Todays panel has to do with Harriet Tubman and Harriet Tubman, the decision of april 20, 2016, to put her on the 20 bill. It was announced at that time. As many of you know, it was met with some degree of controversy. There are those american citizens who said this was just Political Correctness and there were others who, in fact, did not even know who Harriet Tubman was, and various pictures of Harriet Tubman appeared on the internet and people, women who were not, in fact, Harriet Tubman. Harriet tubman has usually been a subject of childrens fiction and very few people really know, at least american citizens we historians know who Harriet Tubman was. But that wasnt the thats not the case with the american public. It was irony noted or the irony was noted in having tubman on the front of the 20 bill and Andrew Jackson on the back. As many of you know, Andrew Jackson was not only a slaveholder himself, but he was also he oversaw indian removal and is renowned for being really an indian killer. In addition to that, many people pointed to the fact that here you have Harriet Tubman who was commodified, who had value, whose worth was, for many people, defined by the amount of money that people paid for her. And here she is in the 20th century being put on perhaps the most popular symbol of american capitalism, the 20 we have today some very distinguished historians who are going to talk about the placement of tubman on the 20 bill and, perhaps, deal with the controversy. I am going to announce everyone as they speak. In as much as i dont want somebody to tune in to cspan at some point and say, who is that. Our first speaker is Catherine Clinton. Catherine clinton is the chair of American History at the university of texas, san antonio, and is International Research professor at Queens University belfast. Mistress womans world in the old south, and Harriet Tubman the road to fr freedom was determined one of the best books by the chicago tribune, having written one of the few biographies, adult biographies of Harriet Tubman. She has published over 25 books, including awardwinning books for children such as, i too sing america. She is a member of the Screen Writers Guild and was an adviser for Steven Spielbergs lincoln following publication of mrs. Lincoln alive in 2009. Her 2012 fleming lectures stepdaughters history, southern women and American Civil War will be published later this year. Professor clinton was on the committee, or, excuse me, the smithsonian summit for putting a woman on the american currency. Im sure she will share some of her experiences on that summit. So without further ado, Catherine Clinton. Thank you. [applause] i do want to say, its so great to be here at the 101st meeting. Being here last year for the very rousing 100th celebration. I was especially heartened by the recognition of africanamerican womens history, its inclusion and this panel today is something im very grateful for and very grateful to be able to come here and talk about the subject about which im so passionate. I want to contextualize a bit my role in this. When i began my doctoral degree in American History at princeton, it was celebrations of the u. S. Bicentennial and working on africanamerican subjects and women subjects. During an era when they were teaching us the age of jackson was something that was quite a struggle. Deborah is laughing here because we know womens history hadnt cracked the curriculum. And she and i were engaged in populating a womanless landscape with our work in the 1980s, battling against academic determinism to keep women out of the academic narrative. One of my professors said that women couldnt decide on history because they didnt get to vote. I went into it trying to really change the narrative. When i stepped off the tenure ladder to write full time, i found that Harriet Tubman was really languishing on the childrens shelf. No new work, no new writings. History needed to engage the public. And so when i went into my sons classroom, i found the fascination with Harriet Tubman was a constant, persistent theme. Although i was often asked questions about harriet beacher bathtub and all kinds of other characters. I was working on an encyclopedia article and found that the last biography had been from 1942. This, he wrote, was the subject of more than two dozen juvenile and picture books by 1990 with childrens literature on tubman increasing exponentially. Her contributions, however, before 1860 were always foregrounded. She made significant contributions as a scout and a spy for the union during the civil war. After 1865 she had a strong and steady record for africanamerican rights, for womens suffrage. Yet the half century following the abolition of slavery, until her death in 1913, remains relatively neglected in the juvenile accounts. By the time my Harriet Tubman the road to freedom appeared in 2004, scholars seemed very eager and ready to integrate her. Along with other icons in womens history. As i said just, in my biography, she had a very adaptive persona. The black panthers celebrated her as a guntoting comrade in arms while contemporary survivors of Domestic Abuse invoked her with safehouses and to protect women and children escaping. Finally, the academy was ready to embrace her as a longlost hero. When the women in the 20s campaign emerged in the spring of 2015, it followed in the wake of rosie rios, president obamas appointment of u. S. Treasurer, campaigning with the secretary of the treasury, tim geit nechlt r and then secretary jack lew to put women on the face of american currency. The Internet Campaign raised important issues about putting women on the money. Harriet tubman was the winner with over 600,000 ballots cast. This petition was sent to the Obama White House in may of 2015. It coincided with the new 10, which was a campaign that lew had conceived to open up the question of who should appear on the new, redesigned bill of american currency. The 10 bill was actually scheduled in terms of the treasury parade of bills and so over a million americans in the summer of 2015 sent in their nominees. This became, in many ways, a populist campaign to educate people about women in American History. As some of you might have seen, apparently the republican nominees battling it out in debates needed some education on women in American History as well. But over the summer of 2015, additionally a save Hamilton Campaign was launched and there were competing agendas about who should appear on the newly redesigned bill. The secretary of treasury invited a group of scholars to discuss ongoing efforts to put a female face on the currency. This was part of several meetings around the country and the launching of the website. The smithsonian summit elicited passionate opinions and heated exchanges. I was grateful to be a part of it. I presented my book to the secretary treasurer and the treasurer herself. With specialists ranging from early america to late 20th century. Experts in womens history, religious studies. Now i suggested during our lively debate that a woman of color must be the first female honored on any redesigned currency. I was not alone in the conviction nor the only one who advocated Harriet Tubman was the woman to fit the bill. It was quite surprising to me that as i felt the group tilting toward tubman one of the scholars who advocated quite passionately for another woman brought up the question that the American People might not be prepared to accept a mammy on the money, even if it was Harriet Tubman. Im not quoting exactly the full comment that this scholar made. But it really did, at that moment, crystallize for those of us arguing passionately. There it was, Harriet Tubman, defined by surviving and achieving. She might be up against the mammy but she was part of a new generation of africanamerican scholarship that including disremembering alongside om omitting. Flesh and blood women as fleshy and bloody as necessary to replace the cartoon characters. The stories have been fantastic. As a little girl born into slavery who liberated and renamed herself as Harriet Tubman, her name being famous in underGround Railroad literature, but in late 20th century, her legacy should be remembered in a very different way. Like many, i followed Media Chatter on this topic. Secretary of the treasury, jacob lew, predicted that there would be an outpouring of interest, as there was. The outcry of hamilton followed. But with the final decision on april 20th, i want to emphasize that not only will Harriet Tubman be put on the front of the 20, but on the back of the redesigned 10, susan b. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth will also appear as well as on the redesigned 5 bill you will have marion anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther king. Historians, biographers, professors, students, pundits all have their controversial remarks on this. But change is really afoot. Certainly, when i began my academic career, the idea that such a sea change would happen in my lifetime that, my students would come familiar not only with Harriet Tubman but beacher stow and jacobs seemed unbelievable. Particularly women of color being recovered. Now vicki ruiz reminded her audience of her president of the aha, women are capable of everything and anything. Writing my biography of Harriet Tubman last century i adopted the mantra, harriets bloom and the u. S. Treasury has pledged that well have billions of tubmans in circulation. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. You know, i neglected to introduce myself. I am deborah gray white. Im the board of governors distinguished professor of history at rutgers university. For those of you who just came in, i am introducing everyone as they speak because we are fortunate enough to have this recorded for posterity for all of posterity by cspan. This will be airing this is a surprise to us, but a very pleasant surprise. It will be airing at 8 00 pm Eastern Standard Time on november 1st. Check your local listings. Our second presenter and we are going through this relatively quickly because we really do want to have time for an extensive question and answer period. But our sn second presenter is jessica millward, associate professor in the department of history at university of california irvine. Her research focuses on slavery in early america, africanAmerican History as well as women and gender. Dr. Millwards first book finding charitys folk, enslaved and free black women in maryland was by the university of Georgia Press in 2015. She is currently working on book length project that discusses africanamerican womens experiences with Sexual Assault and intimate Partner Violence through the long 19th century. Jessica . [ applause ] i want to make sure all the apparatuses are working. It leans back. There we go. Good morning. Thank you all for coming today. I would like to thank my panelists, because i actually put this panel together. It came out of a conversation some of us were having, actually using modern media. We were texting back and forth and talking about what this bill meant, what the representation of this bill meant, what it meant for slavery scholars. So in that moment, professor of itny gill and professor daina berry quickly agreed to do a panel and we invited the members you see before you today. Thank you very much for joining this panel. When the u. S. Treasury announced that Harriet Tubman would be on the 20 bill i had a mixed reaction. Because people went over time trying to explain just how happy they were about this. One of my favorites was in black vernacular, now instead of let me hold 5, theyll say let me hold a tub. Can i hold a tub for a week and get back to you, as in Harriet Tubman. So that was the funny side. That was the joyful side. I, like many people, are happy to see an africanamerican woman will be on u. S. Monetary bill. However, i also had extreme sadness. As someone who works on enslaved women and enslaved women in maryland in particular, i was conflicted about what this means about images, of public memory. What it means about the archive of slavery and finally what it means about the continued commodification of black womens bodies. I dont mean the women we know. I mean the women that we dont know. What is lost when we only represent one iconic person . Public memory is as much about what we want to forget as it is about what we would like to remember. So as historians, our job is to deal with these consequences of cause and effects of events in history. But if you were assigned the role as public historian you speak to larger audiences and sometimes crucial details can be lost. What that allows us to happen as a nation is to have a cognitive dissidents, the steps to take to get someone on a bill of money or rise to iconic status. We forget what the lived experiences may have been like. For africanamerican women, this has particular implications because even today in the public imagination, in public media, africanamerican women are still a curiosity. Sometimes theyre on display in music videos. Now with the advent of Michelle Obama in the white house theres a different type of image, strong black family, a mother with her two children and her husband. When we look at early american enslaved women as the scholar Jennifer Morgan notes, early travelers considered african womens bodies a mons trtrocity. In thinking about that, im thinking about the moments that she left behind when she fled to freedom. We know she ran away, left her family. She travels back to the south several times. What is actually not spoken many of the times is that Harriet Tubman was well versed in freedom. Her family, many of her family members were freed by will. So this notion for freedom didnt come out of nowhere. It was organic. It had been bred in to her. She could see other family members who were enjoying lifes freedom. We know Harriet Tubman is more well formed than other women in history. We have more complex readings of her thanks to historians like ca Catherine Clinton. At one point black women were a monstrosty. Very often black women arent entered into the archive. They werent deemed important enough to enter their names or family members unless they are jotted down in an account book by slave hold ers. Scholar fuente says how do we narrate the fleeting glimpse of slaves in the archives and still meet the demands of history . In other words basically how do we build the story from the bottom up . How do we search for women who arent supposed to be there . In my own work i stumbled upon a woman named Charity Folks, who was enslaved in the 1700s. She earned her freedom slightly after the american revolution. She earned her freedom, her childrens freedom and her grandchildrens freedom. And her family of annapolis, maryland, go on to be a very privileged family in both annapolis, baltimore and new york. And even with unearthing her in the archive, i had to contend with the fact, is she like other black women or is she exceptional . In some ways looking at Charity Folks and Harriet Tubman, we see two people, one well known, one not as well known. But their lives intermingled in some ways, given that they both had experiences with slavery and freedom. Harriet tubman runs away from maryland and then returns. Charity folks is enslaved in maryland, then freed in maryland and she lives in maryland. Should both be in some ways in slavery. Again when enslaved women entered the archive, they are usually recorded as pieces of property and as free black women we have much more information about them. Continue to wrestle with laws preimposed on them. History by its very nature is a restorative process. If we use money, and we think about it as historic evidence, 100 years when people go into this archive, standing building, digital building or lives somewhere in the cloud, i wonder what people would think about this moment, to look at Harriet Tubman on a 20 bill at the same time that the u. S. So truly devalues black lives. And in a moment where historian daina rameyberry reminds us africanamericans were worth more enslaved than they are as free people and even as citizens today. Finally as i close, how the black womans body functions as its own form of memory and own form of archive. We know that history was grafted on the body either in terms of physical punishment, in terms of the fact that their wounds literally recreated the enslaved population and everything they did in some ways to sometimes stop having pregnancies, stop trying to further the system of slavery. We know, of course, disproportionately they were raped. We know this. And we also know that in key cases, in the cases of harriets maryland, they actually just like slavery was attached to the woman so was freedom. In maryland brief moments where enslaved women could give birth to free children. The catch is that they had to make sure that there was a declaration made for their children at the time that the owner entered the court and listed the mothers freedom. Essentially, if mary was freed, there were provisions set aside for her children. You would think that this is a happy story but, unfortunately, what it also means is it further constricted the years that children would have to stay in bondage in maryland. So, in closing, i do want to return to this issue of Andrew Jackson remaining on the back side of the 20 bill. In some ways keeping Andrew Jackson on this bill is really conceiting to people who are not ready for a major change. And my thoughts about this are two. There are countless unnamed women who haunt the archive, who haunt public memory and literally haunt some of us. Specifically because they carry the weight of the diverse past. Collectively and individually, multifatteted to dismantle the slave system without suppressing the systems most violent and horrific truths. Ha havent black women carried enough on their backs already . And second, how long must we and second, how long must we be haunted or endure images of slave holders riding women from the back . [ applause ] well discuss that later. Our third speaker is lashawn harris, who is assistant professor of history at Michigan State university. Some of her scholarly essays appear in the journal of africanAmerican History, journal of social history and the journal of urban history. Harris is the author of sex workers, psychics and numbers runners black women in new york citys underground economy published by university of Illinois Press in 2016. Just this year. [ applause ] the thank you, daina and thank you, jessica, for inviting me to be on this panel. 20th Century Black womens participation. The citys informal catalyst in working class womens employment opportunities, new occupational identities and Survival Strategies that socioeconomic backgrounds, poverty stricken and middle class mothers, church goers, pleasure seekers and budding entrepreneurs enter the citys underground labor economy for a host of different reasons. Their occupational selections were, in part, shaped by the citys socioeconomic cultural, Political Landscape of the 1920s and 1930s, including black urbanization for migration, local, national downturns, family conflict and urban syndicates. New labor identities beyond unskilled wage labor attaining economic wealth and experiencing social and sexual pleasures also fueled womens attraction to elicit unlicensed labor, courageously pushing past the limits of acceptable and prescribed legal work, black women carved out niches for themselves, laboring often times in the shadows as sks workers, fortune tellers. During one of the nations bloodiest wars, courageously aiding the federal government against Confederate Forces she worked as a nurse, scout and spy, organizing one of the lesserknown yet important espionage forces of the country. Under the command of secretary of state stanton, tubman gathered military intelligence and was responsible for the union armys successful raid in june 1863. Tubmans laboring efforts as a spy is a classic example of the different ways in which clandestine work sustained political work and made it possible for the continuous strkturing of american democracy and capitalism. For tubman laboring in the shadows despite possibilities of crippling Confederate Forces came at a price. She was exposed to physical dangers. She faced the possibility of being captured by Confederate Forces and did not reap the fruits of her labor. Moreover like early 20th century women who labored in the shadows, she was not financially compensated for her services. The same government that requested she risk her life failed to recognize her, quote, unquote, unofficial service in labor. Nonpayment for Services Rendered placed tubman in financial distress, forced her to rely on the kindness of Close Friends and compelled her to take desperate measures, including giving two con artists 2,000 in hopes of getting 5,000 worth of gold in 1873. More importantly, nonpayment for Services Rendered complicated her efforts to provide for herself as well as for her family. In my estimation, one of the many possible ways to recognize tubmans Remarkable Service to the nation is by placing her on the 20 bill. For me, tubmans placement on u. S. Occurrencecy one of commemoration. The image of tubman on the front of the bank note represents the opportunity to discuss and confront the american past in a more nuance way, to reexamine her life, political activism and civil war participation, to reiterate the importance of black women and the role that they play in the political, economic and social development of the nation and, most importantly, the image of tubman on the front of the bank note represents the opportunity to explore black womens complex and shifting relationship to american capitalism. Thank you. [ applause ] our next speaker is tiffany m. Gill, who is associate professor in the department of black studies in the department of history at the university of delaware. She is the author of beauty shop politics africanamerican womens activism in the Beauty Industry published by the university of Illinois Press. She served as editor for the National Biography project and is at work on a book manuscript tentatively titled the making of black global citizens. She is also currently a scholar in residence at the shamburg center for the 20162017 academic year. Tiffany . [ applause ] thank you and good morning. It is truly an honor to have been invited to participate on this panel. Particularly because i am a scholar who does not work on the period of slavery. And i hold my scholarly colleagues who do the very painstepai painstaking work of reconstructing black womens lives in the era of slavery. Theyre my academic heroes and heroines. As someone in the 20th century still the work to construct black womens lives in the 20th century is equally as important and painstaking, although i hope we appreciate the kind of both physical labor, emotional labor and sometimes spiritual labor that the work that they do does. I am honored to just even be on this panel. And so as someone who is not a scholar of slavery, im taking sort of a different trajectory in my remarks and ive decided to center my musings on the role of memory as well as representation, as dr. White mentioned, much of my research has been about black women and beauty culture and representation. And so that is where i want to sort of center my remarks and my reactions to Harriet Tubmans appearance on the 20 bill. So probably, like many of you, i first encountered tubman as an image stapled to a Bulletin Board in front of my second grade classroom at Elementary School in brooklyn, new york, during black History Month. Right . Im sure we all remember the Bulletin Boards. And as the teachers pet, i would help sort of put them up. And i was black History Month was exciting because we actually in addition to the president s that were on there, right, for president s day we also got to have some black women. She was the only black woman maybe rosa parks. I dont recall the exact image that i beheld. But i do remember thinking that this woman appeared old and she appeared wise to my 8yearold eyes. I could not fully appreciate tubmans complexity based on that twodimensional image. Unfortunately, even after the painstaking Research Done by Catherine Clinton and the work done by my fellow panelists to help reconstruct the lives of enslaved women still much of what the public knows about tubman and enslaved women in general is still as two dimensional as that black History Month Bulletin Board. So when the u. S. Treasury announced that her likeness would be plasd on the 20 bill, my reaction was, like many of my colleagues, decidedly mixed. It still is, honestly. I welcome her role ace Freedom Fighter and lauded the implications of this honor, particularly as a black woman and professionally as a black womans historian i was still uncomfortable with an enslaved woman on u. S. Currency, an enslaved woman who, herself, was purchased with currency and given a monetary value now representing the 20 bill. I also feared that the enshrining of tubman on the bill would only add to further im going to make this word up but i think youll understand it, the further twodimensionalizing of tubman and the black History Monthification of tubman, who was a very complex and multifaceted person. However my sort of mixed angst turned as i began to survey the reaction to the selection of tubman, particularly the conversations that were happening mainly in social media but also in real life about the image that should be used of tubman on the 20 bill. And i remember it distinctly because where it was in the news cycle, because it was my it was the day before my birthday and the day before prince died. Yes, prince died on my birthday. Ill never forgive him for that. I remember those two days. The dinner conversations at my birthday, these were the two topics people were talking about and grappling with the implications of tubman. And if social media was any indication, tubmans appearance was on the mind of many. There seemed to be a preoccupation with what tubman looked like and what image would be on the 20 bill. And a lot of this conversation had to do with her countenance. A brief survey on social media. Sometimes its dangerous to read a lot of social media or comment. These were not isolated comments. They happened quite a bit. One man in kansas said, quote, i hope they put a smile on Harriet Tubman for the 20 bill. Another post said they can make her smile a little bit, cant they . Why would they use the image of a grimp person . I would be too discouraged to buy anything with this bill. I think this is an interesting conversation for a couple of reasons, right . And this is not actually a new conversation. That representations of black women within sort of our public memory often center on not just how they look, but how they are to appear, how they are to make other people feel, right . No one comments on the countenance of the men who are currently on our currency. And it made me think about the conversations and the historical record about the mammy Memorial Movement of the 1920s and 1930s, which called for a monument, and this is a quote, in memory to the faithful colored mammies of the south. This is an interest parallel moment to look at. This is a moment where a representation of a black woman was being discussed within sort of the federal government, right . And this was to enshrine a mammy monument on the mall of washington, d. C. Not too far from where the new museum now sits. As i was looking through the images of the proposed statue, one of them particularly caught my eye, one called mammy o mine which shows a mammy figure holding a child. And what was very deliberate, and this was odd because you dont usely see this in statuary was a curled lip acres smile. That was to reflect to us this myth that black women were very happy and secure in this subservient state. Can we get a picture of Harriet Tubman smiling, we have to think about it within the context of the images of the mammy, right . That part of the discomfort with tubmans defiant images that are often seen is that they completely annihilate ideas about docile slave mammies. Another thing that struck me a lot about the social media response and the whole impotus to smile, that tubman should be made to smile, in the artist rendering of the bill, they could put a smile on her, in a way that her own agency, her own desires are erased. That we can erase what she looked like if we just put a smile on her. I could not help but think about the conversations even around street harassment that many women experience, right . A lot of it is why arent you smiling . If youre walking down the street. Why arent you smiling . As if women, particularly black women, should always be Walking Around with some kind of smile on their face. The other comments that were on social media were not just about the desire to see a smiling tubman, but commenting on what they perceived as her lack of beauty. And im going to spare you from some of the more despicable comments but nobody is going to want 20 bills with Harriet Tubmans ugly mug staring at them. Im going to start asking for two tens. Cashiers wont even accept the money, et cetera, et cetera. Her perceived ugliness was even commented on by those who allegedly appreciated her as an historical figure. One tweet said tubmans life story and impact are priceless to america but, wow, not a looker. Thats going to be one ugly 20 bill. And what was striking to me about this, right theres a whole lot we could unpack during our q a about misogyny, colorism, racism in its intersectional nature. But what was interesting catherine alluded to this in her presentation was the desire particularly on the part of black people, and particularly by black women to sort of claim a beautiful harriet, right . To the point where there began circulating an image of a black woman in the 19th century dressed in a sumptuous victorian gown against the backdrop of flours, touted as the young tubman and there were calls even from those who wanted tubman on the bill, maybe we should use this picture. Of course, that picture was not tubman. That was of a woman named lady sarah forbes bennett. I want you to sort of think about and pause it, what the role and meaning of beauty plays into this and why there has been such a backlash that is certainly informed by racism, misogyny, et cetera, but this idea to have a representation that abided by certain measures of beauty. Instead of looking at how tubman herself represented herself and for all of her freedom fighting, we see a woman who welds her old age even though we dont have extensive collection of images of tubman, we can see how she presented herself, what kind of physical deportment does she use . How was she photographed . What was her own sense of identity and beauty . Self presentation was important. And it was a way for particularly enslaved people to control and take control or some semblance of control over their bodies, particularly in the period of slavery. Seemingly frivolous practice for personal adornment of africanamericans, a way for them to reclaim their bodies outside of slave labor and even denegrading wage labor. As far as i know the u. S. Treasury has not yet selected the actual image that will be on it. But i think that interrogating the image and the responses to it have much to teach us about black womanhood, about memory and about the politics of beauty. Thank you. [ applause ] okay. So our final formal presentation is from daina ramey berry, an associate professor of history and African Studies at the university of texas at boston. Shes author of swing the cycle for the harvest is right. Again another university of Illinois Press publication. Theres a theme here. Shes also an awardwinning editor of enslaved women in america and encyclopedia and slavery and freedom in savannah, university of Georgia Press. Uga press. Right. And in 2017 beacon press will publish her second single authored book the price for their pound of flesh the value of the enslaved from the womb to the grave in the building of a nation. Professor berry. [ applause ] thank you so much for the introduction and for asking me to be on this panel. Its tough bringing up the rear but im going to do my best here. When we first conceived of this session, we were talking about this about a year ago. Our goal was to have a conversation about Harriet Tubman on the 20 bill and the larger context of black women commodifcation. For me i had concerns for people who came out immediately and began speaking for Harriet Tubman. Quote, she would not be pleased. Shes probably offended. How dare the federal government place Harriet Tubman on a bill that once enslaved her. But my question at that time was very simple. And it still remains. Would she be offended, and how do we know . We cant speak for her. We dont know exactly how she would feel about this. Yes, she had a 300 or later 40,000 bounty on her life, dead or alive. But now that same bill is honoring her as one of our national heroes. She is replacing as our panelists have described the Andrew Jackson slave holder and sole architect of the native american removal who now adorns the back of the 20. But rather than being commemorated as someone on a wanted ad, she now adorns one of the most widely circulated currencies that we have. To be sure, some for some that means that people are putting their hands all over her again, as dr. Millward addressed. This line of thinking rejects the notion of her on the 20 bill because currency commodified enslaved people. As dr. White just mentioned i finished writing a book about the commodification of enslaved people. I want to talk about what that means. What is commodification . It has forms to commodification today, ncaa controversy where ucla sued the ncaa for profiting from images of himself long after he finished playing basketball for ucla. And won the case. And now theres still, i think, in appeals now dealing with what do we do with bodies that cant make money off the work theyre doing for universities. We have them adorned in posters, in flyers, brochures, so forth. This is the athletes we see today who are also still being commodified. Back to my wheelhouse. What i argue in my new book is enslaved women were commodified before they were born, preconception, and after they died. Guarantees that they would give birth to healthy children and when they didnt, enslavers sued and took these cases to court, waiting for their money to be returned. That is commodification. Enslaved people that were differently abled, blind, deaf, or had body parts missing were valued accordingly. That is commodification. One man was sold with a right eye missing, valued at 275 less than his counterpart who had two eyes. They gave him a discount because of this quote, unquote, disability. That is commodification, i would argue. Quote, unquote, barren women was sold for not giving birth for five years and they said at that point that she was they wanted their money back because they paid money for her to give birth to healthy children. That, i would argue, is commodification. The scene in 12 years a slave, the little girl is kept while the mother and brother is sold away because she would make a fine wench one day once shes fattened up. That, my friends, is commodification. Yes, Harriet Tubman was commodified. She had a higher price tag on her body while she was at large. Her body spiked because of what she did to the institution had greater damage than the average price for an enslaved woman at that time. She freed hundreds of people worth millions or probably billions of dollars today. To recognize the life of a fo formerly enslaved woman on federal currency is a significant statement in my opinion, especially when this currency violently oppressed them at one point. The first africanamerican, male or enslaved people in the small little cut outs throughout the civil war period. Now tubman in her freedom will be on the 20 bill so that everyone now will know her story. She gets the last word as far as im concerned and will make every person reflect on who she was and what she did and how she too represents the United States. Thank you. I want to thank the panel list and i only for just the enlightening and stimulating presentations and staying on time but doing so gives us the opportunity to really discuss this and to hear from other people in the audience. I feel like i should Say Something about just about the fact that a once enslaved woman is going to be put on the 20 bill i will just recall that 30 years ago or maybe 31 years ago now i published arent i a woman female slaves in the plantation south and that was the first on African American women slaves and in it i tried to demonstrate that male and female slavery was different. And that when you look at the institution you couldnt say slaves without gendering this. I can say this and for sure we hate to say it this way because it sounds so quaint and slee shea but we have, in fact, come an incredibly long way. Everyone here has written incredible histories of African American women in general and African American women slaves in particular. So in that respect i just think and having moved to the 20 bill is like we have clearly moved from the margins to the center in more ways than one. I think its incredibly ironic it comes at a time when even African Americans are talking about we dont need this history of slavery. Why do we always have to go back there. In fact, some scholars are claiming or asking the question, why do we always start with the sail old tired story about slavery and while charles s. Johnson for example has talked about the end of the African American narrative and how we need a new story. No, theres so much about African Americans and African American women and we need to just keep recovering that old story. We have time. For those of you that did not come in at the time were using the cameras here. So cspan is taping this. It will air november 1st starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern standard time if youre in another time zone but, you know, or another state, i guess perhaps you should check your local listings, all right . Please because we do have these cameras here. Please identify yourself if you ask a question or make a comment. So im going to open the floor to anyone that has one. Question. Stand and identify yourself. I want to first thank you panelist and chair and some of the thoughts that you brought up about this idea of Harriet Tubman and individual icon versus the collective and how theres this possibility of the individual erasing the collective and somehow im curious about thoughts on why Harriet Tubman as opposed to other icons. Why individuals versus a collective image and why Harriet Tubman and others of the area. I believe that each mic has a button here and maybe thats the way they work. You should be able to turn it on. I teach on american icons and it began when i was teaching in belfast so i thought a lot about this iconic question going into a round table with other historians advocating and it became clear when youre looking for only one you start he li eliminating. The iconic wegs is not to find someone that everyone is come pleatly comfortable with but someone that is symbolic and the theme of this new family of currency and the way they talk about the treasury was freedom and we try to introduce freedom struggles as part of the vocabulary and this question again about smiling which was so well brought up is something that we had to point out. Lincoln is not grinning from the 5 bill et cetera and also that hair wret was someone that was emotio emblematic in many ways and she remained illiterate and supported education and was quite brave. One of the things that i think people dont realize and have been advertised widely is this group of bills will be the first that will have bumps to identify them. So those that have sight challenges will the disabled will be honored by this bill and since harriet herself suffered with a disability thats important and also a large percentage of american currency is used abroad. I think that was an idea that she was symbolic of these larger questions. I argued in favor of her own. We dont know what she would say used the language of patriotism and talked abdraping herself in the flag of her country so that was i think some of the thinking and my thinking was not like well we have to compromise. We have to settle. That could be well other peoples feelings but i was very, very much moved by the way in which she was so well accepted as someone that had struggled with the underGround Railroad but as my colleagues pointed out her role in the civil war and her role after the civil war and in charity and womens suffrage. Rosa parks was born the same month Harriet Tubman died and theres a marvelous kind of American History scope of that which i tried to point out. This is what i will say. As much as we can chide the fact that shes iconic and exceptional the underside of that is the connection that she has with other black women. Other enslaved women and press people in general so i think that the trick is to acknowledge her history in its full totality. To borrow from tiffanys point we need to go beyond i dont know how you say it. Two dimensional the two dimensional depiction and actually when the issue of the bill circulated i sent a text to dana berry. This is how people talk now. I sent a text. I didnt call her. I one in favor of it and she reminded me that in jamaica its on the money. 500 bill and i said were so behind in the u. S. , right . And so now all the way across the board. I was wondering iconic African American moments by the state and its the use of resistance and activism. President obama speech and dedication of the african American History culture and related to police brutality. I was wondering if anybody could speak to that. I am reminded im thinking not just in the contemporary period about this but to the historical legacy of how African Americans have both symbolically but also African Americans and their actual bodies have been used as representatives of the u. S. State, of u. S. Empire in ways that would try to stop attempts against freedom struggles. I think abfor example in the cold war period how African American athletes and African American musicians were often sent by the state department abroad to sort of rerepresent america and to represent a narrative of american equality in the face of great dehumanizing against African Americans. I think its about this sort of position of this moment where we have an African American moment on the currency at the very moment that were at the outcry of black lives matter at the moment where antiblack violence and antiblack violence against women in particular should not cause us to dismiss the symbolic importance but i hope it opens up a conversation and in some ways it could be seen as sort of a way to placate perhaps. Im not sure. I dont know if i want to go there again. Im on this panel but i havent quite wrapped my brain around or come to my conclusion about whether or not this is a good thing. For me its a good thing that it opens up this conversation but certainly this would not be the first time that the state has used symbols of black heroism as a way to combat freedom struggles so its an important question to ask. The controversy was about the timing and im a bit of a conspiracy theorists so i have been reading articles recently about the end of currency. The end of paper money. I take it very personally that when a woman gets named to be on a bill we have economists talking about the end of paper currency. But i think thats thats why i brought up the international. Whamp goes on in the u. S. We can think about it but the timing issues was a struggle. The frasz Roots Campaign was women on the 20. When will the treasury put the bill out and what the order is of the bill and back to the backs on the very day the secretary would ask how he could prevent derailing this and also why with the first bill be the 10 bill rather than the 20 scheduled for redesign which will put women on the back. So we are, you know, in a matter of the timing of it but that is a very good question to say when it was coming out in the summer of 2015. Other issues. Its not scheduled to come out for another four years. This is not something that is going to appear tomorrow. Its scheduled to appear in 2020. Plenty of time for another administration to derail it. He at least made the point he was trying to make a huge Public Campaign out of it because anyone that wants to derail it will have to go up against this issue and its the secretary of the treasury who alone makes the decision and the only requirements are that the person may not be living but all of those votes were not taking into account that they would have to be deceased to be on the bill. Other questions and comments. Yes. Ron davis from the university of texas. I was thinking the 20 bill is the most counterfeited bill in the u. S. , and the world actually. So i was kind of thinking, how do we kind of look at Harriet Tubman in that light as far as its potential to be counterfeited and could someone speak to what that might mean or the significance of that in particular. I think thats ironic. In two ways. One most bills are counterfeited in some way. And if i think about it symbolically i think about how she went back and forth and helped people become free. So i think its ironic that that might happen with her bill. May not really respond to your answer but for me that doesnt take away the impact of having her on it. And thats just my simple response to that. I feel the same way. I feel like she should be on it and we cant help but the money is going to be falsely replicated throughout the country and throughout the world. Its unfortunate that it would happen undoubtedly it probably will. Yes. Good morning, again. Thank you for a really incredible panel. Im a professor of African American studies. The question is for the whole panel but particularly dr. Gil. Made an interesting point about how in the 1920s they recognized black women again on a more federal landscape and the kinds of messages that they were seeking to be conveyed and two black women about race and gender and arguably class and through that moment. What sort of messages might we take and what could we imagine about the ideas being put forth and with the advancement of having a woman like Harriet Tubman on the 20 bill. What if anything we should take from that. Ill take a stab at that. Its an interesting point and the earlier questions of the discussion around beauty is messages what makes for that black women are sort of safe in terms of representation if they can embody a particular kind of beauty. I think also about the call to put someone like beyonce on the 20 bill and replicating that message. Its a conflicting one. Its this idea of black women struggling for their sense of identity. Black women being able to assert their identities. Making messages about inclusion. And how we can think of the nice messages of that but there is to me. I still have this when it comes to the representation of the 20 bill and sort of black women as symbolic. Black women in a particular without engaging the issues of black womanhood so there is a way that this can open up a conversation about black womens inclusion in the politic and also it can sort of deflect from that in making this particular icon as a stand in for sort of black womanhood and look we put one on the dollar bill. Its similar to the way that obama himself began to embody a particular symbolic importance. A post racial america because someone has achieved a particular status and so my fear is that this conversation around tubman may actually stop conversations about black wils further inclusion in the body of politi politics. She did always pose with a white lace collar and had dignity. Thats why it was so important to bring up the circulated. The fantasy tubman was a concubine for the period. And in some ways i would like to make a bid for having her the way she presented herself. You may understand it in one way but to look at it and understand what she was fighting for was very representative of 19th century African American women and into the 21st century. Theres also an image of her that circulates with a gun and with a rifle. Which will be very interesting to see what they finally decide to do. I dont know whether or not the nra would endorse such a thing they dont think of black people period. Black men or women. I dont know what to think about this because i dont think that when people use american currency, when they use the 20 bill, i dont think anybody really looks at the 20 bills and says oh until this controversy came up or this issue came up about jackson. Jacksons history is totally irrelevant to the issue of the 20 bill. That he was in the 18 teens with the wars in florida and then oversaw the indian removal. One has to wonder whether or not Harriet Tubmann and her nhistor will be similarly washed away and taken for granted without knowing the history. Im interested in whether or not theres a corelary between the fact that we have this moment initiated by these women that have a very revolutionary black woman be recognized in a different way so im wondering if theres this is the optimist in me, right . Im wondering if theres some correlation with respect to that but also take your point that theres a way in which that could also be a safety valve measure too. So that was part of the question. Yes. Yes. John brown talked about Harriet Tubman and called her he so the way in which other female abolitionists were also degendered or talked about in masculine terms and im just wondering the way in which she was looked at in the 1850s as being this incredible leader but also cant be a female icon. Has to be a masculine icon how that might play into her being chosen specifically even though she absolutely embraced her femaleness and her woman hood but never theless at that time, was looked at differently particularly by white males. How that has to be tied in. Im also uncomfortable with the fact that they were viewed as commodities. Just because they participated in the system that way doesnt mean they viewed themselves in that way and i think we need to push back on that particular argument as being relevant at all. A couple of things. One, for your last point, enslaved people did not see themselves they saw themselves as whole people and they rejected the notion of comodification and they tried to manipulate the system to stay with family members when they were on the auction block. To not be sold to a certain person so they were actively trying to circumvent the modification against them. Second thing is there was a lot of assumptions about enslaved women during slavery. Particularly because of the amount of labor they performed and the fact that they performed labor and the perspective of some enslaifrs surprisingly that women could do these things. There were no swrender disstings. Women were doing as much as men and theres sort of a blurring there. Theres a blurring of gender lines. And when theyre younger both boys and girls are dressed in smocks and dresses. Theres a blurring of gender lines until women are able to give birth and what you raise as questions about the blurred gender lines was something across the board part of the enslaved experience and i think that your seeing it even now in a way in which people perceived Harriet Tubman as well. Im going from side to side so that we get i just had a question, i guess i want to start with a bit of a comment. So recently in the debates donald trump has been talking about the way Hillary Clinton presents herself and it was a recent New York Times article that said going through the pictures of the president s and saying none of these people look, quote unquote, handsome in any of these portraits they give as comical relief to this debate about beauty and representation and hillary lynn on tclinton ang about that makes me think about how women are often given a role in the nation thinking about them as mothers. Nationalism, motherhood and Hillary Clinton is challenging of that. Part of that rhetoric that trump often uses and thinking about this image of Harriet Tubman as an image not imbedded in motherhood but thats going to be something that stands for our nation and how we can think about this as a state laying claim to an image of women that isnt grounded in motherhood. I like the picture of her with the gun. I would prefer for her to be on the bill with a gun even as opposed to her sitting at her home in new york. When i first heard about that i think there was maybe conversations about rosa parks being on the 20 bill and i was routing for rosa parks. I like her and i live in miff mitch not too far from detroit but i was a little bit skept car length about Harriet Tubman because i also i didnt participate in the social media stuff but i was curious about how she was going to look on the 20 bill and her smile because part of me was like okay, i want black women to be represented well on a peace of u. S. Currency that will be around the nation and the world. But this whole idea about motherhood made me think about her in this gun, right . And how to me that was symbolic of her courage, her resistance to free hundreds of people as well as her making a statement about what freedom meant to herself, her family and, you know, millions of black people. So this whole image of the motherhood was great and fine when i read about it but the resistance aspect for me and her holding that gun was, you know, just like can they please put this on here. I know that they cant. Holding the gun was a part of the disputed Harriet Tubman controversy. I have two sons and theyre five years apart and each one of them saw Harriet Tubman play but into the 80s and the 90s African Americans with guns portrayed was a controversy. Will was a mural being put up and one of the problems is that she did carry a pistol with her. We have that record but she is often portrayed on the under Ground Railroad as an African American woman carrying the rifle. And i sort of point out how ludicrous that would have been. She had the pistol for other purposes but during the civil war her scenes in life of Harriet Tubman was showing her with a rifle. Showing her as the warrior. So indeed i take your point about the warrior. I would like to also just say along with several other people, we point out that there is some suggestion that harriet might have herself be a mother. She did adopt a daughter. The origins of that daughter are something that we discussed and she may have indeed been in a forced relationship and later took that child to safety and then adopted the child. A very old almost biblical kind of tale and she was known as the moses of her people put seeing her as a warrior is something very important but also she did not masculinize as some did during that period. Who are rowic black women as well. Can i also, to that point, there is the wood cut image of harriet holding the gun and also the image that circulated during the black Arts Movement period where she is also with this defiant long rifle and that comes at a moment where black people are controlling their own narratives right . And theyre expressing their own angst in the United States and worldwide in a particular kind of way. In terms of Harriet Tubman and mothering and motherhood i would suggest that we expand the definition of motherhood. Is it giving birth to a child or adopting the child . Or is it the decision to not have children. That should be included in the conversation about motherhood. Theres a particular kind of politics that surrounds that. A particular a sexuality and if you look at some black women in leadership positions and in order to be in a particular leadership roles its assumed that you have given up certain kinds of positions. Either as a wife of mother. We would expand the conversation of motherhood and i would say in bringing people to freedom or in doing charity work youre doing another kind of labor, right . If we want to call it mothering. We can call it maternalism. I dont like that model. But i would hesitate to way motherhood is only attached to the womb in a biological sense. Im just going to exercise the prerogative of the chair and ask you a question. I do a little social media but not as much as some other people but im wondering about has there been any push back from men . Black men in the fact that the first black person on i cant imagine that there has not been because, you know the notion that maybe it should have been quote, unquote, a black man that represented the race on the bill. Could you speak about that a little bit. That is a thing now. I cant believe that came out of my mouth but there were a lot of the issues around the beauty or ugliness of Harriet Tubman and were coming from both black and white men and women also. It was surprising that it was across the board in that conversation and probably it was out there. I did not see folks talking about it and i think the conversation about her ugliness is actually that conversation. But i think that that language about beauty or that language about not smiling is actually very much a gendered conversation and it is sort of a resentment around how dare she be on there but most of it was not language in the way you expressed it. Perhaps it has sort of, you know, tried thomas k itself in a different kind of way but to me that conversation around her being too ugly and her not smiling is also imbedded in that decree teak. Maybe youre thinking about the way in which in an earlier generation they were so deep and the color purple blow ups and what im saying is that maybe in another way we are achieving by again, those of us historians and it must be a woman of color. So i think in some ways the unification of a movement for women and certainly, you know, american womens history and i as president of the Southern Historical Association Planning a meeting see that women of color must be on panels. Must be panels on such an important topic. That kind of change is being embraced by other movements and groups. Youre talking about where ista the backlash and im say i dont go think its as partar wou hav as it used to be. Well, that goes without saying. I think that beauty becomes a stand in. The question of someones beauty questions their womanhood in a particular way. The climate is such that it cannot be expressed in the stark way that it would have been. Did you find anyone saying approximate put that beautiful Frederick Douglas on the money . You havent heard that yet . I did not see that. Its telling that its not there in some ways. In other words, it may be coated differently now. Its still there but people are just masking it a little bit differently or it could be as you say, its we really have turned a corner. But i guess well see. Well i promised to go over here. Im a doctorial candidate at rutgers university. I was wondering when we talk about the timing of Harriet Tubman being on the new currency, but we talked about the massacre and black lives Matter Movement but also as a consequence of those things we saw controversies around the country about the naming of things. Commemorating certain people in certain places. It exploded at universities and we talked about krefr is on davis highway being renamed in Northern Virginia and this is happening nationally and nationwide. So what place do you see this sort of decision to put harriet on money as part of a resistance or trying to quell the resistance to the naming and commemorating of certain prominent individuals in our american landscape. I think its connected in a way having served on the panel at u. T. Austin to make a decision about the Jefferson Davis statue and the conversations that we had there we did look broadly at other spaces on campus. Places named after confederate generals. We got back last week from yale because theres conversations about the college and a number of other scholars were there talking about their controversies so i think thats part of the molt. I think that tubman on the 20 bill comes in that setting. I want to add though a question to this. How come nobody was you and arms when plaque people were put on stamps. We celebrated. They have the whole black African American stamp collection and i never saw anybody get outraged at all about Harriet Tubman marion anderson, hattie mcdaniels. No one was upset and a stamp is a form of money, right . So why arent we outraged by the images, representation and the people selected for stamps. Theres African American portraits where there are no images and there are artist representations on stamps. You do have this image and we dont look at the money because went out of the academy. And i was really interested in children as consumers of history they do look at the money they do look at these images. It can make a difference but the controversy over naming and challenging it. And through African American, insurgencies and activism through the panel and the headlines tackling that particular controversy and also the massacre at orlando, what that means and, you know, various kinds of issues and i think we need to as historians think about the connections between the work we do and trying to connect these meetings to the larger public. Having just finished a study at rutgers on the connection between rutgers and slavery as well as native americans i think it is a recognition that history matters. What people do with it, that is for each individual. Each institution to figure that out. But the fact that these studies are being undertaken marly at universities is an indication that it does matter. The history is something that is important and whether we rename things or keep on a particular name i think that finally i feel very proud. Not that i didnt always feel proud to be a historian. But there is this recognition that what we do is really, very important. I said yesterday on a panel for the conference on slavery they redid slavery at George Washingtons manner and i said i think histories and historians are trending. And understand the Historical Context of Different Things that he is happened and understanding the context of eem and individuals and its very important and i think were now trending. N nsh. And im wondering about the opportunity this presents to raise those issues. It was at a time when African Americans were creating their own homes because the white Nursing Homes were locking them out. But those kind of issues of being able to have dignity in your later careers are prevalent and forgotten part of resistance now with the high cost of longterm Care Insurance and Social Security system is in trouble and in the needs of issues we need to bring attention to as a community. She was called in auburn new york a philanthropist in the newspaper. I was struck by doing my research and she did open the only home outside of new york city in the entire new york state that was open. It was to the disabled. It was to the veteran. It was also to the indigent and she ran the home it was later taken over by the church and she was someone very committed and if you read the material she was brought over to boston when they named the home. She was someone that really believed in trying to change. So Harriet Tubman humanitarian is something that i think is so important and yet at the same time i read a library and letter where a grand son was asked what he thought of Harriet Tubman and he said too right at the same time that there were clubs so i think you have to keep spreading the word and there will be many, many versions of harriet to go out and shell have a gun in some and ferocious in others and supporting education. She collected money for schools and she was very committed to that. And also the whole question of the way in which the controversy over the Abraham Lincoln statue in lincoln park in washington gave money and it was collected. African american philanthropy needs reexamination. And in a very ironic way perhaps on the history of Andrew Jackson will come to the fore and people will see not only that he was quote, unquote, father of the Democratic Party and the franchise for white men and that also he was the number one person with indian removal and that he was a slave owner so some of the by putting her on one side and the front side people may say well let me look at this white guy in the back and see what he is all about and perhaps, you know, the histories will go forth together and people will get an understanding of both of them in a new way. This has got me thinking about how to think about Harriet Tubman on the 20 bill in the context of black economics and certain that are still in the black Community Like beauty shops and barbershops an things like that and limited access to wealth building and i guess thinking about money and what cash means to black women as opposed to other communities and how we can think about Harriet Tubman in that context. Yeah, for sure. For people that barter or trade in other ways probably wont have access to the 20 bill perhaps but i think that in some ways its still become the bill still becomes important to the community. Im not sure if im answering part of your question or your comment. Its or not to both cash communities as well as, you know, people that dont have and its ways of bartering. I just want my sense is though, you know, its almost like the prediction that the ebook was going that there was going to be the end of the book. What we found is that people really like books. They like the physical. So i would be weary about predicting the end of cash and also African Americans we are the i think we were the last to use checkbooks and when it comes to i mean bitcoins have not taken off. That whole thing. In order to get a credit card you have to have good credit. So my feeling is that black people are going to be using cash and not just black people but a lot of people in america particularly given the way that the middle class is going. A lot of people are going to be using cash for awhile so i am not a little bit im not concerned that cash is really going to disappear. So i study sort of the visuality of race and the use of cultural institutions to inscribe African Americans into the mesh historical narrative. So what i was really interested in from all of your talks is sort of the function of memorialization in American History. And what it can do to address the seen and unseen work that dr. Harris had mentioned building this nation and Harriet Tubman is organizing slaves for harpers ferry. She is the leader on the underGround Railroad. She is doing this work that is unacknowledged but now that, you know its trying to reclaim her name what is that going to do for our american historical their ti narrative. End hi having the federal government acknowledge that theyre creating the park service site. So i just kind of wanted to know. I think it raises conversation because i mean again i do 20th century history so so more by being on the panel it made me reexamine tubmans life and the unseen work she performed for the government. She should be on the bill because she saved this nation. So i think that by having her on the bill and by having, you know, all of these different types of memorials for her its going to make people reexamine the history and what we thought we knew about tubman because even after the civil war and even during grad school i had no idea what happened to her after the civil war. How she struggled. This was someone who didnt you can direct me if im wrong, didnt really have formal employment. She worked as a Domestic Worker but this was someone that really struggled so for me at least it gives us a chance to reexamine the history and possibly look at other black wil that may have unrecognized sacrifices during that maritime period. What she was doing was labor. It was work. She didnt keep records and there was of course the struggle over her pension which she only received in 1899 and its important to see it was blocked. There were people trying to push it forward but blocked. Your pension would go through the government and they would be blocking it so it is sort of do, in the 21st century near the raid theres a Harriet Tubman bridge that has been established and her name is enscribed in the very place where her brave acts that we might have forgotten are going to be but this memorialization i think shows the change that goes on. However, the work is being done. We think of confederate memorials from another era where as a recent count in North Carolina shows that they were actually building them stronger and more often during the civil rights era. So we are really you know, we are in struggle in contention but putting names out there and having peel ask questions and people ask questions and bringing history. And the question is important in thinking about the role of institutions as taking us beyond the symbolic so i think about its a symbolic institution but its an institution of the new National Museum of african American History and culture in the smithsonian which can allow we have artifacts. Harriet tubman saw which is one of the first things ill run to see when i get to the museum but thinking about how institutions need to come in conjunction with the symbolic representations to be able to paint bigger, richer, fuller stories so i do think that that something for us to keep in mind is institutions are needed to further that conversation. If i can add one thing and that is to the public memory conversati conversation. Theres still so much work that needs to be done so this is a step in the right direction. I want to thank everyone for being in attendance. Id like to thank doctors clinton, millwood, harris, for this very intriguing and insightful panel. Id like to thank cspan for bringing it to the american public. Again this panel, the round table on Harriet Tubman and black womens history and the 20 bill was brought to us by and sponsored by the association of black women stories. Thank you. [ applause ] wednesday on cspan 3 british lawmakers question chair of the inquiry that published a report on the u. K. s decision to join the u. S. In invading iraq. And the cspan radio app. Most of us when we think of Winston Churchill we think of the older man sending young men into war but no one knew better and few knew as well the realities of war that the terror and devastation and he said to his mother the raw comes through. He knew the disaster that war was. Sunday night on q and a the historian talks about the early military career of Winston Churchill in her book hero of the empire. A daring escape and the making of Winston Churchill. Going with a regiment on the day that it fell to the british and he takes over the prison and he frees the men that have been the fellow prisoners. And he watches as the flag is torn down and the union jack is hoisted in its place. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern and cspans q and a. Its a complicated issue and i had to research to get base knowledge of what i wanted to talk about in this piece and its so complicated that i cant talk about it all in 5 to 7 minutes. Its a really broad topic and i thought it would be nice to have a vocal point that i wanted to focus on so before i started interviewing my parents and before i started shooting i researched this topic extensively. Visited my dads pharmacy and talked to the pharmacist there. I talked to my mom and her colleagues and coworkers and of course Internet Research and went to the library. A lot of Internet Research to find more like facts and data and statistics about employment of those with