and as many of you know, it was met with some degree of controversy because there are those american citizens who said, but this was just a political correctness. and there were others who, in fact, they didn't even know who harriet tubman was. and various pictures of harriet tubman appeared on the internet and the people -- women who were in fact not harriet tubman. harriet tubman has usually been a subject of children's fiction. and very few people really know, at least american citizens -- we historians know who harriet tubman was. but that wasn't -- that's 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 slave holder himself, but he was also -- oversaw indian removal and is renowned for being, really, an indian killer. so in addition to that, many people pointed to the fact that here you have harriet tubman who was commodified, who had value, whose worth who for many people were defined by the amount of money people would pay for her. and here she is in the 20th century being put on -- being put on perhaps the most popular symbol of american capitalism, $20 bill. so we have, today, some very distinguished historians who are going to talk about the placement of hub tan tubman on bill and perhaps deal with the controversy. i'm going to announce everyone as they speak inasmuch as i don't want somebody to tune in to cspan at some point and say who is that? so our first speaker is catherine clinton. and karat kat listen clinton is the denman chair of american history at the university of texas, san antonio, and is international research professor at queens university, belfast. her first book, the plantation mistress, women's world in the old south appeared in 1982. and harriet tubman, the road to freedom was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2014 by the christian science monitor and the chicago tribune. having written a -- one of the few biographies -- adult biographies of harriet tubman. she has published over 25 books, including award-winning books for children, such as i too sing america, three citizenship centuries of african-american poetry. she is a member of the screenwriters guild and was an advise for for speechb spielberg's lincoln followed mrs. linkon's life in 2009. her 2012 fleming lectures, stepdaughters of history, southern women, and the american civil war, will be published later this year. professor clinton was on the committee -- excuse me -- the smithsonian summit for putting a woman on the american currency. and i'm sure she's going to share some of her experiences on that summit. so without further ado, catherine clinton. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> i do want to say it's 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 african-american women's history, its inclusion and this panel today is something i'm very grateful for and very grateful to be able to come here and talk about a subject about which i'm 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. by centennial. and working on african-american subjects. and on women's subjects during an era when they were teaching us the age of jackson was something quite a struggle. debora is laughing here because we know women's history hadn't cracked the curriculum. and she and i were engaged in populating a womenless landscape with our -- in 1980s, battling against academic conservatism determined to keep women out of master narrative. one of my professors said women couldn't engage in national history because they didn't get the vote until 1920. i went into it tring to change that narrative. when i stepped off the tenure ladder in 1991 to write full time i discovered that harriet tubman was really languishing on the children's shelf. there had been no new biographies, new no work. my stepping outside the ivy covered cloisters led me to appreciate more the ways in which academic history needed to engage the public. when i went into my son's classroom i found that fascination with harriet tubman was a constant theme. i was working on an encyclopedia article in 1992 and discovered the last biography was in 1942. t harriet tubman's 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 1965, she had a strong and steady record of agitating for african-american rights, for women's sunshine while establishing her charity home in upstate new york. while in the half century following the abolition of slavery until they are death in 1913 remains negative elected in the juvenile accounts. by the time my harriet tubman the road to freedom appeared in 2004 similars seemed ready and interested in integrating her alongside feminist icons within women's history. as i suggest, she had a very adaptive historical persona. the black panthers celebrated her as a gun toting comrade in arms while contemporary survives of domestic abuse invoked her to protect women and children escaping. finally the academy was ready to embrace her as a long lost hero. when the women in the '20s campaign emerged in the spring of 2015, it followed in the wake of rosie rio's, president obama's appointment as u.s. treasurer campaigning with the seth of the treasury, tim geithner, and then secretary jack lieu 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. and this petition was sent to the obama white house in may of 2015. it coincided with the new 10 which was a campaign lou 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. so over a million americans in the summer of 2015 sent in their nominees. this became in many way as populist campaign to educate americans about women in american history. as some of you might have seen apparently the republican nominees battling it out in debates needed 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 front of the next redesigned bill. on august 5th, 2015, the secretary of the treasury invited a group of scholars to the smithsonian 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 summit elist itted passionate opinions and heated exchanges. i was very grateful to be part of it. i presented my book to both the secretary of the testry and the treasurer herself. similars from history, anthropologi anthropologists, specialists ranging from early america to late 20th century. experts in knew miss mattic studies, religious studies, women's studies. i suggested that a woman of color must be the first female honored on any redesigned current see. i was not alone on this conviction. in my forthcoming back i talk about disimagining the mammy as a necessary step for women, particularly women like harriet tubman within the context of u.s. freedom struggles. it was surprising to me as i felt the group tilting toward tubman one of the scholars who advocated passionately for another woman brought up the question that the american people might not be prepared to accept a mammy on the money each if it was harriet tubman. i'm not quoting exactly the full comment that this scholar made, but it really did at that moment i think crystallize for those arguing passionately, there it was, harriet tubman, perhaps one of two black women in american history defying invisible by surviving and achieving. she might be up against the mammy but she was part of a new generation of african-american scholarship that included disremembering alongside omitting. she would be part of a revised narrative that allowed flesh and blood women as fleshy and bloody as necessary to replace the cartoon characters. stories as fantastic as those of a little call araaminta born into slavery who liberated and renamed herself as harriet tubman, her name being famous in underground railroad literature, but in the late 20th century, her name should be remembered in a different way. secretary of the treasury jacob lou predicted there would be an outpouring of interest as there was. the outcry of hamilton followed. 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, a list of women will appear as well as on the redesigned $5 bill you will have marion anderson, eleanor roosevelt, and martin luther king. historians, biographers and students pundits and theorists all have their controversial remarks on this, but change is really afoot. certainly when i began my academic career over 40 years ago the idea that such a sea change would happen within my lifetime, that my students would come to college familiar not only with harriet tubman but harriet beatrice osteoand harriet jacobs seemed unimaginable, the forgotten voice of women, particularly women of color being recovered. vicky ruiz reminded her audience in her presidency of the aha, women are capable of anything and everything. writhing my bowiography of harriet tubman last century i adopted the mantra, let 100 harriets bloom, and the u.s. treasury has reported we are going to have billions of tubmans in circulation. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. you know, i neglected to introduce myself. i am debora gray white, and i am board of governor's distinguished professor of history at rutger's university. i am introducing everyone as they speak because we are fortune enough to have this recorded for posterity for all of posterity by cspan. and this will be airing -- this was a surprise to us. but a very pleasant surprise. it will be airing at 8:00 p.m. eastern standard time on november 1st. so check your local listings. our second presenter -- and we're going through this relatively quickly because we really do want to have time for an extensive question-and-answer period. but our second presenter is jessica mill worth who is the associate professor in the department of history at university of california irvine. her research focuses on slavery in early america, african-american history, as well as women and gender. dr. mill word's first book, finding charity's folk enslaved and free black women in maryland was by the university of georgia press from 2015. mill word is currently working on book length project that discusses african-american women's experiences with sexual assault and int mad partner violence through the long 19th century. jessica? [ applause ] >> let me make sure all the apparatuses are working. >> it leans back. >> it leans back. there we go. so good morning. >> 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 sclors n. that moment two of the professors quickly agreed to do a panel. we then invited the rest of the members that you see before you today. i thank you very much for joining this panel. so when the u.s. treasury announced that harriet tubman would be on the $20 bill i had a mixed reaction which engendered these text messages back and forth. at first i was just interested in the memes that came out and some of the funny jokes, right, because people went overtime trying to explain just how happy they were about this. one of my favorites was, in black ver knack claw, now people will be saying instead of let me hold $5, they will say allow me to hold a tub -- can i hold a tub for a week and get back to you. as in harriet tubman. that was the funny side. that was the joyful side. i like many people are happy to see that a african-american woman will be on a 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 with what this means about images of public memory, what it means about the archive of slavery, and finally what it means about the continued kmod fix of black women's bodies. more specifically what are the wages of commemoration for women like harriet tubman. i don't mean the women that we know. i mean the women that we don't 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. as historians it's our job to deal with these consequences of cause and effects of events in history. if you assign the role of 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 dissidence where we are not in tune with actually the steps to take to get someone either on a bill of money or rise to iconic status, right? we forget what the lived experiences may have been like. for african-american women this has particular implications because even today in the public imagination, in public media, african-american women are still a curiosity. sometimes they are on display in music videos. now with the advent of michele obama in the white house there is a different type of image. there is the strong black family, there is mother with her two children and her husband. most importantly when we look at early american enslaved women as this scholar jennifer morgan notes, early travelers to africa considered african women's's bodies a montrossity. we go from a curiosity and a montrossity to then displayed on a $20 on a $20 the moments when harriet tubman was -- and what she left behind when she fled to freedom. we know she ran away. she left her family. she travels back to the south several times. what tubman was well versed in freedom. her family, many of her family members were freed by will. so this notion for freedom didn't come out of nowhere. it was organic. it had been bred in to her. she could see other family members who were enjoying life's freedom. what we know about harriet tubman is she's more well formed than other women in history. we have more complex readings of her thanks to historians like catherine clinton. so this brings us to the archive. we know black women are a curiosity. at one point they are a monstrosity. this brings us to the archive, one very often black women are not entered into the archive. they weren't deemed important enough to enter their names or family members unless they are jotted down in an account book by slave holders. scholar fuente says how do we narrate the fleeting glimpse of enslaved subjects in the archives and still meet the disciplinary demands of history? in other words basically how do we build the story from the bottom up? how do we search for women who aren't 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 children's freedom and her grandchildren's 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. we do not know how they continue to wrestle with the after life of slavery, how they continue to wrestle with laws that reimposed upon them, and construct -- i'm sorry, constrict their movements. history by its very nature is a restorative process. if we use money, this 20 dollar bill, and think of it as historical 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 african-americans were worth more enslaved than they are as free people and even as citizens today. finally as i close, how the black woman's 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 re-created 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 harriet's 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 mother's 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 african-american diaspora's past. collectively and individually, multifaceted to dismantle the slave system without suppressing the system's most violent and horrific truths. haven't 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 ] >> we'll 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 african-american 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 city's underground economy" published by university of illinois press in 2016. just this year. [ applause ] >> good morning. thank you, daina, and thank you, jessica, for inviting me to be on. 20th century black women's participation. interpreted as a masculine space by some historians, the city's informal catalyst in working class women's employment opportunities, new occupational identities and survival strategies that provide financial stability and a sense of labor autonomy. hailing from socioeconomic backgrounds, poverty stricken and middle class mothers, church goers and pleasure seekers and budding entrepreneurs enter the city's underground labor economy for a host of different reasons. their occupational selections were, in part, shaped by the city's rapidly changing socioeconomic, cultural and political landscape of the 1920s and 1930s, including urban -- including black urbanization for migration, local, national downturns, family conflict and urban criminal syndicates. the possibility of creating new labor identities beyond unskilled wage labor attaining economic wealth and experiencing social and sexual pleasures also fueled women's attraction to illicit 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 sex workers, fortune tellers and street vendors. harriet tubman, like urban black women nearly six decades later, labored off the grid during one of the nation's bloodiest wars. courageously aiding the federal government against confederate forces she worked as a nurse, scout and spy, organizing one of the lesser-known yet important espionage net works of the 19th century. under the command of secretary of state stanton, tubman assisted union soldiers in contrabands, gathered military intelligence and was responsible for the union army's successful raid in june 1863. tubman's laboring efforts as a spy is a classic example of the different ways in which clandestine work supported labor, sustained political work and made it possible for the continuous structuring of american democracy and capitalism. for tubman laboring in the shadows despite possibilities of crippling confederate forces came at a price. as an espionage worker, 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 tubman's remarkable service to the nation is by placing her on the $20 bill. for me, tubman's placement on u.s. currency is 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 women's 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: african-american women's 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 research and black culture for the 2016-2017 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 painstaking work of reconstructing black women's lives in the era of slavery. they're my academic heroes and heroines. as someone in the 20th century still the work to construct black women's 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, i'm taking sort of a different trajectory in my remarks and i've 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 tubman's 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? i'm sure we all remember the bulletin boards. and as the teacher's pet, i would help sort of put them up. and i was -- black history month was exciting because we actually -- in addition to the presidents 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 don't recall the exact image that i beheld. but i do remember thinking that this woman appeared old and she appeared wise to my 8-year-old eyes. i could not fully appreciate tubman's complexity based on that two-dimensional 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 placed on the $20 bill, my reaction was, like many of my colleagues, decidedly mixed. it still is, honestly. i welcome her recognition as the role of a freedom fighter and lauded the implications of this honor, particularly as a black woman and professionally as a black woman historian, i was 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 -- i'm going to make this word up but i think you'll understand it, the further two-dimensionalizing of tubman and the black history month-ification 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. i'll 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, tubman's 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 it's dangerous to read a lot of social media or comment. these are telling because they were not isolated comments, but 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, can't they? why would they use the image of a grumpy 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 interesting 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 don't usually see this in statuary was a curled lip as her 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 tubman's 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 impetus 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 aren't you smiling? if you're walking down the street. why aren't 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 i'm going to spare you from some of the more despicable comments but nobody is going to want $20 bills with harriet tubman's ugly mug staring at them. i'm going to start asking for two tens. cashiers won't 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 tubman's life story and impact are priceless to america but, wow, not a looker. that's going to be one ugly $20 bill. and what was striking to me about this, right -- there's 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 flowers, 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. who was enslaved, african woman. 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 don't 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 african-americaned, represented a way for them to reclaim their bodies outside of slave labor and even denigrating 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 diaspora studies at the university of texas at boston. she's author of "swing the cycle for the harvest is right." gender and slavery in antebellum, georgia. again another university of illinois press publication. there's a theme here. she's also an award-winning 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. it's tough bringing up the rear but i'm 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. and internal economies. for me i had concerns for people who came out immediately and began speaking for harriet tubman. quote, she would not be pleased. she's 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 can't speak for her. we don't 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, we see this most recently with the 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 there's still, i think, in appeals now dealing with what do we do with bodies that can't make money off the work they're 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 in post mortem spaces. women were sold with warranties on their uteruses for guerin these they would give birth to healthy children. and when they didn't, 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 she's 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 value spiked because 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 formerly enslaved woman on federal currency is a significant statement in my opinion, especially when this currently violently oppressed them at one point. the first african-american, male or female, to appear on federally sanctioned currency but is not the first enslaved person to appear on paper money circulated in the united states. confederate greenbacks had enslaved people in the small little cutouts of these bills 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 i'm concerned and will make every person who uses a $20 have to reflect on who she was, what she did and how she, too, represents the united states. thank you. [ applause ] >> i want to thank the panel not only for just the enlightening and stimulating presentations, but also for staying on time. but doing so give us the opportunity to really discuss this and to hear from other people in the audience. i feel like i should say something because -- about -- just about the fact that an enslaved -- 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 aren't i a woman female slaves in the plantation south and that was the first book, or first full mondaygra monograph 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 couldn't 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 clichish, 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 it's incredibly ironic it comes at a time when even african americans are talking about we don't 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 same 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, there's so much about african-americans that we don't know, and certainly african-american women that we don't need a new story, we just need to keep recovering that old story. we have time. because, again, let me announce for those of you who did not come in at the time, we're using the cameras here. so c-span is taping this. it will air november 1st starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern standard time if you're 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 have a question or make a comment. so i'm going to open the floor to anyone who has a comment. yes. >> question. >> stand and identify yourself. >> i'm ann brown from cal state fullerton. i want to, first, thank you panelists 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 there's this possibility of the individual erasing the collective and somehow i'm curious about thoughts on why harriet tubman as opposed to other icons. sort of two questions, one, why individuals versus a collective image and why harriet tubman instead of other potential icons of that era. >> i believe that each mic has a button here and maybe that's the way they work. >> you should be able to turn it on. >> i teach a course on american ikens 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 you're looking for only one you start eliminating. it is a process of elimination. also i thought the iconic question was not to find someone that everyone is completely comfortable with, but someone who is symbolic. and the theme of this new family of currency, which the is the way they talk about the treasury, is 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 harriet was someone who was emblematic in many ways and she in terms of having a great impact and being such a symbol and yet she remained illiterate her entire life, yet she supported education, she was quite brave. one of the things that i think people don't 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 that's important and also a large percentage of american currency is used abroad. i've seen 30% quoted at one time. i think that was an idea that she was symbolic of these larger questions. i argued in favor of her own. we don't know what she would say or think but she often used the language of patriotism and talked about draping 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 people's 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 women's suffrage. rosa parks was born the same month harriet tubman died and there's a marvelous kind of american history scope of that which i tried to point out. others may have other kinds of thinking. >> this is what i will say. as much as we can chide the fact that she's 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 tiffany's point we need to go beyond -- i don't 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 daina berry. this is how people talk now. i sent a text. i didn't call her. i wasn't necessarily in favor of it. she reminded me in jamaica, mammy is on the money. $500 bill and i said we're so behind in the u.s., right? so i'm very conflicted all the way across the board. >> other questions, in the back, yes. >> i'm jasmine howard, doctoral student at michigan state university. i was wondering iconic african american moments by the state and the obama administration in particular, the use of resistance and activism. president obama speech and dedication of the african american history culture and related to the current protests against police brutality. i was wondering if anybody could speak to that. >> i am reminded i'm 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 about, for 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 represent america, and to represent a narrative of american equality in the face of great dehumanizing against african-americans. i think it's about this sort of position of this moment where we have an african-american woman on the currency at very moment we're at the outcry of black lives matter, at the very moment where anti-black violence and anti-black violence against women in particular is so virulent should not necessarily cause us to dismiss the symbolic importance, but certainly i hope it opens up a conversation. and in some ways it could be seen as sort of a way to placate perhaps. i'm not sure. i don't know if i want to go there again. i'm on this panel but i haven't quite wrapped my brain around or come to my conclusion about whether or not this is a good thing. for me it's 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 it's an important question to ask. >> the controversy was about the timing and i'm 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 that's -- that's why i brought up the international. what goes on in the u.s., we can think about it but the timing issues was a struggle. the grassroots 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. >> it's not scheduled to come out for another four years. this is not something that is going to appear tomorrow. it's 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 it's 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 it's potential to be counterfeited and could someone speak to what that might mean or the significance of that in particular. >> i think that's 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 it's ironic that that might happen with her bill. may not really respond to your answer but for me that doesn't take away the impact of having her on it. and that's just my simple response to that. >> i feel the same way. i feel like she should be on it and we can't help but the money is going to be falsely replicated throughout the country and throughout the world. it's unfortunate that it would happen undoubtedly it probably will. >> yes. >> good morning, again. thank you for a really incredible panel. i'm 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. >> i'll take a stab at that. it's 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. it's a conflicting one. it's 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 object way without engaging the issues of black womanhood. so is there is a way that this can open up a conversation about black women's inclusion in the citizenry in the body politic, but it can also sort of deflect from that in terms of making this icon a stand in for black womanhood. and look we put one on the dollar bill. it's 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 women's further inclusion in the body politics. >> she did always pose with a white lace collar and had dignity. that's 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. >> there's 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 don't know whether or not the nra would endorse such a thing they don't think of black people period. black men or women. i don't know what to think about this because i don't think that when people use american currency, when they use the $20 bill, i don't think anybody really looks at the $20 bills and says oh until this controversy came up or this issue came up about jackson. jackson's history is totally irrelevant to the issue of the $20 bill. that he was an indian killer in 1818, in the 18 teens with the seminole wars and the indian wars in florida. and then oversaw the indian removal. that gets wiped away. one has to wonder whether or not harriet tubmann and her history will be similarly washed away and taken for granted without knowing the history. >> i'm interested in whether or not there's a corollary 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 i'm wondering if there's -- this is the optimist in me, right? i'm wondering if there's some correlation with respect to that but also take your point that there's a way in which that could also be a safety valve measure too. so that was part of the question. >> yes. >> yes. >> just piggybacking on that, john brown talked about harriet tubman in masculine pronouns, called her he, and so the way in which other female abolitionists were also degendered or talked about in masculine terms and i'm just wondering the way in which she was looked at in the 1850s as being this incredible leader but also can't 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 nevertheless at that time, was looked at differently particularly by white males. how that has to be tied in. i'm also uncomfortable with the fact that they were viewed as commodities. just because they participated in the system that way doesn't 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 commodification 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 enslavers surprisingly that women could do these things. they referred to women as human machines that did this work. there were no gender distinctions. you looked at the prime hands working in the fields, because women were doing as much as men and there's sort of a blurring there. there's a blurring of gender lines. and when they're younger both boys and girls are dressed in smocks and dresses. there's 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. >> i'm going from side to side so that we get -- >> my name is beatrice adams, i'm a doctoral candidate at rutgers. 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 presidents 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 clinton and thinking 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 that's 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 isn't 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 rosa parks and i live in michigan, not too far from detroit. but i was a little bit skeptical about harriet tubman because i also -- i didn't participate in the social media stuff, but i was curious how she would 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 can't. >> holding the gun was a part of the disputed harriet tubman controversy. i have two sons and they're 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. there was a mural that was going to be 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. heroic black women as well. >> can i also, to that point, there is the wood cut image of harriet tubman 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 and discussing their own annualannuagst in the united states. i would s that we actually expand the definition of motherhood. is it simply giving birth to a child? is it adopting a child? or is it the decision to not have children? that should be included in the conversation about motherhood. by not being a mother, there's a particular kind of politics that surrounds that, a particular kind of asexuality. and if you look at some black women in leadership positions or some black women at the academy, in order to be in a particular leadership roles it's assumed that you have given up certain kinds of positions. either it's a wife or mother. so i would say that we would expand the conversation of motherhood. i would also say that in -- in bringing people to freedom or in doing charity work, you're doing another kind of labor, right? if we want to call it mothering, we could call it maternalism. i don't really like that model, but i would hesitate to say that motherhood is only attached to the womb in a biological sense. >> i don't see anyone over here, so i'm going to just exercise the prerogative of the chair and ask you all a question. because i'm -- i do a little social media but not as -- not as much as some other people, but i'm wondering about, has there been any pushback from men, black men, in the fact that the first black person on -- i can't imagine that there has not been because, you know, the notion that maybe it should have been, quote unquote, a black man who represented the race on the bill. so could you speak about that for just a little bit. >> yeah. from my social media research, that is a thing now. i can't believe that came out of my mouth, but a lot of the issues around the beauty or ugliness of harriet tubman were coming from men, both black and white men and some women also. it was really what's surprising is that it was across the board this conversation. and while i did not -- and it's probably -- was out there, i did not see folks talking about it that it should not have been a woman, but i think the conversation about her ugliness is actually that conversation, right? 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. most of it would not language in the way that you expressed it, perhaps the misogamy has sort of tried to mask itself in a different kind of way, but to me that conversation around her being too ugly and her not smiling is also embedded in that kind of critique. >> maybe you're thinking about the way in which in an earlier generation there was such deep fissures and the color purple blowups. no, no, no what i'm saying that maybe in another way we are achieving by, again, those of us historians and i wasn't the only one, there were other people, jane -- it must be a woman of color. so i think in some ways the unit -- unification of a movement for women and certainly, you know, american women's 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 this such an important topic, that kind of change is being embraced by movements and groups. you know, you're talking about where is the backlash? i don't think it's as particular as it would have been. >> as it used to be? >> well, that goes without saying. >> but it's languaged differently. i think beauty becomes a stand in about -- the question about woman's beauty questions their womanhood. i think it's perhaps more sophisticated in a good way but it's languaged differently. the climate is such that it cannot be expressed in the stark way that it would have been how dare it be a woman. >> did you find anyone going put that beautiful frederick douglas? you haven't heard that yet. >> the stuff i've seen i did not see that. i think it's telling that it's not there in some ways. >> in other words, i mean, it may be coded differently now. >> exactly. which means that it's still there. >> right. >> people are just masking it, as you said, a little differently or it could be, as you say, it's -- we really have turned a corner, but i guess we'll see. all right. i promised to go over here. yes. >> i'm a doctoral candidate at rutgers university. we talk about the timing of harriet tubman being on the new currency, but what was happening in 2015, we talked about the manual 9 massacre and the burgeoning black lives movement and consequence of those two things we saw the controversy around the country about naming of things, commemorating certain people in certain places and exploded at universities and we talked about jefferson davis highway being renamed in northern virginia, so this is happening nationally and nationwide. so what place do you see this sort of decision to put harriet on money as kind of the resistance to this or trying to quell the resistance to the naming and commemorating of certain prominent individuals in our american landscape? >> i think it's connected in a way having served on the panel at ut. austin to make a decision about the jefferson statue. we looked broadly at other places on campus, buildings, places named after confederate generals. i just got back from yale. they were talking about their university controversies. and so i do think this is part of that moment 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 up in arms when black people were put on stamps? we actually celebrated -- people collect the stamps. they had the whole black african-american stamp collection and i never saw anybody get outraged at all about harriet tubman. marion anderson. haddy mcdaniels. no one was upset and a stamp is a form of money, right? so why aren't we outraged by the images, representation and the people selected for stamps when we are with the $20 bill? >> there are even african-american portraits where there are no images, there are artists representations on stamps which is an interesting -- you do have this image. and also the idea earlier was, you know, we don't look at the money and i guess because i again went out of the academy and wrote for 15 years i was really interested in children as consumers of history. they do look at the money. $20 bill, $10 bill, 5 bill. they do look at these images. it's important to say it can make a difference, but the controversy over naming and challenging this, it is, you know, i think through the force of african-american insurgencies, activism, through the aha had a panel on it which die that spoke so well at. at the southern we'll do history in the headlines tackling that particular controversy, also the massacre at orlando, what that means. 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, you know, i mean, that is for each individual, for each institution to figure that out. but the fact that these these studies are being undertaken, particularly at universities is an indication that id does matter. that history is something that is important. and so whether we rename things, whether we keep a particular name, i think that finally i feel very proud -- not that i didn't always feel proud to be an historian, i think 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 -- they did an exhibit called lives bound together on slavery at george washington's manner, and i said -- i think history and historians are trending. we are. i mean, people are looking to us for answers to understand the historical context of different things that have happened. to understand the context of people, individuals, and it's very important. so like you said, history matters, historians matters. i think we're now trending. >> yes. >> hi, i'm an assistant professor. harriet tubman also run an old folks home in new york, and i'm wondering about the opportunity that this presents to raise those issues. she was doing it at a time where african-americans were creating their own homes because the white nursing homes were standards of worthiness of poor that we could never meet. those issues of being able to have dignity in your later life are forgotten about with the high cost of long-term care insurance, social security system is in trouble, where does that discussion fit within this and within the needs of issues we need to bring attention to as a community? >> well she was called a philanthropist which i was struck to 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, but she was someone, i think very committed. and if you read the material, she was brought over to boston when they named a home after her. she went to washington for the club. she was someone who really believed quite in trying to change. harriet tubman humanitarian is something i think is so important and yet at the same time i read at the library a letter where a grandson of william lloyd garrison was solicited and asked what he thought of harriet tubman and he said -- who? right at the same time that there were harriet tubman clubs. i think you have to keep spreading the word and there will be many, many versions of harriet that go out. she'll have a gun h in some, ferocious in others and supporting education. i found she collected money for schools and center it. she was very committed to that. so i think philanthropy and also the whole question of the way in which -- the controversy over the abraham lincoln statue in lincoln park in washington where an african-american woman gave money and it was collected from, quote, colored troops. that african-american philanthropy is something that really i think needs re-examination. >> and in a very ironic way perhaps of the history of andrew jackson will now come to the fore and people will see, you know, not only that he was quote unquote father of the democratic party, expanded the franchise for white men that also he was you know, the number one person when we have to look to indian removal and that he was a slave owner. so some of the by putting her on one side, on the front side, people may say, well, let me look at this black guy on the back and see what he's 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. yes. >> yes. >> thank you. this question that the end of currency has gotten me thinking about how to think about harriet tubman on the $20 bill in the context of black economics and certain economies that are still cash economies in the black community like beauty shops and bar boar shops and things like that and limited access to wealth building and this current conversation around reparations. so i guess thinking about money and what cash means to black people as opposed to other communities and how we can think of harriet tubman in that context. >> yeah, for sure. i think having her on -- cash is important, right? we all need cash. and for people who can't -- you know, who barter or trade in other ways probably won't have access to the $20 bill, perhaps. but i think that in some ways it's still -- the bill still becomes important to the community. i'm not sure i'm answering part of your question or your comment, but i think it's important. i think it's important to both cash communities as well as you know people who don't have -- who use nontangible sorts of bartering. i just want to -- my sense is, though, you know, it's almost like the prediction that the ebook was going -- you know, that there was going to be the end of the book. and what we found is that people really like books. they like the physical -- they like the tactileness of it, et cetera. so i would be a little bit weary about predicting the end of cash. also, african-americans, you know, we are -- i think we were the last to use checkbooks or to use checks. and when it comes to -- bid coins have not taken off and that whole thing. in order to get a credit card, you have to have good credit. so, my feeling is that black people can 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 will be using cash for a while, so i'm not a little bit -- i'm not concerned that cash is really going to disappear. we have five more minutes. >> my name is britney hall. dc torl student at rutgers university. so i study sort of the visuality of race and use of cultural institutions to sort of inscribe african-americans into the american historical narrative. so i was really interested in from all of your talks is sort of the function of memorialization in american history and the very visual nature of it. everyone pretty much mentioned that. and what it can do to address the sort of seen and unseen work that dr. harris had mentioned. the scene and unseen work of building this nation that is sort of controversial, right? harriet tubman is organizing slaves for harper's ferry. she is the leader on the underground railroad. she is doing this clan december tine work that is unage knowledged. what is that going to do that they're trying to reclaim her name for our american historical narrative, especially because we're having the federal government sort of acknowledge that they're creating the national park service site and dedication to tubman. i kind of wanted to know what you thought. >> i think it raises conversation. again, i do 20th century history, so when i was invited to be on this panel, i actually had to reread katherine clinton's book, right? so for me by being on the panel it made me re-examine tubman's life and the unseen work that she had performed for the government. she should be on the bill because she saved this nation. i think by having her on the bill and by having all of these different types of memorials pop on her, i think it's going to really make people really revisit that history and really examine what we thought we knew about tubman because for a long time even after the civil war and before this even during grad school i had no idea what happened to her after the civil war, how she struggled. this is someone who didn't -- you can correct me if i'm wrong, didn't really have formal employment. this was someone who really struggled. so for me, at least, and probably for millions of people who really don't have a sense of who she was and what she did for this country, i think it gives us a chance to re-examine that history. and possibly look at other black women who may, you know, unrecognized sacrifices during that particular time period because the labor is -- what she was doing was labor. it was work. >> and she didn't keep records. >> right. >> and there was, of course, struggle over her pension, but she only received in 1899. and it's so important to see that it was blocked. there were people trying to push it forward, but blocked particularly by your pension would go through the government in south carolinaens would be blocking it, so it's sort of do, you know, do in the 21st century near the river raid there's a harriet tubman bridge that has been establish and her name is enscribed where her brave acts that we might have forgotten are going to be. this memorialization shows the change that goes on. however, as dina knows from the panel you were on at the aha, the work is also being done for example we think of something like 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 in struggle, in contention, but putting names out there and having people ask questions, i don't think it's always children. i think people look at these markers and they look at the names and they'll ask the questions, you know, who is harold washington because he's enscribed in chicago. it's a way i think of bringing history alive as deborah says. it's the work we try to promote. >> just really briefly, i think your question is important in thinking about the role of institutions as taking us beyond the symbolic. i think it's a symbolic institution but it's still institution new national museum of african-american history and culture in the smithsonian which can allow -- right, we have artifact, harriet tubman shawls which is one of the first things i'll run to see when i get to the museum. institutions need to come in conjunction with the symbolic representations to be able to paint sort of bigger, richer, fuller stories. so i do think that's something for us to keep in mind is that institutions are needed to further that conversation. >> and if i can add one thing. and that is to the public memory conversation. this will be a glass half full, maybe i shouldn't end with this. but kmemization is a form of reconciliation. it's not a form of reparations. there's still so much more work that needs to be done. so i think this is a step in the right direction. >> i want to thank everyone for being in attendance. i would like to think doctors clinton, gill, berry for this very, very intriguing and insightful panel. i would like to thank c-span. for bringing it to the american public. again, this panel the wages of kmemization, a round table on harriet tubman, black women's history and the $20 bill was brought to us by asalah and also sponsored by the association of black women historians. thank you. [ applause ]. >> announcer: you're watching american history tv. covering history c-span style with tours of museums, archival film, eyewitness accounts and discussions with authors, historians and teachers. you can watch us on c-span 3 every weekend during congressional breaks and on holidays, too. for more information visit our website at c-span.org sla/histo. the presidential inauguration of donald trump is friday january 20th. c-span will have live coverage of all the day's events and ceremonies. watch live on c-span and c-span.org and listen live on the free c-span radio app. join us on tuesday for live coverage of the opening day of the new congress. watch the official swearing in in of the new and re-elected members of the house and senate and election of the speaker of house. our all-day live coverage begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. or listen to it on the free c-span radio app. >> follow the transition of government on c-span as president-elect donald trump selects his cabinet and the republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress. we'll take you to key events as they happen without interruption. watch on demand at c-span.org or listen on our free c-span radio app. >> on december 16, 1773 thousands of massachusetts colonists gathered in boston to discuss a shipment of tea that had arrived in port from britain. the arrival of the tea escalated an already-existing debate over the new tea tax and sons of liberty led an effort to protest. after the debate colonists marched and dumped the tea into busten harbor. boston harbor. the debate reenactors and observers re-create the scene. this 45-minute event was hosted by old south meeting house and boston tea party ships and museum. and now, ladies and gentlemen, the 242nd anniversary celebration of the boston tea party. >> good evening. my name is george robert hughes. perhaps you have heard of me. i have been a shoe maker most of my life, a tradesman of the humble cla

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