Harriet Tubman $20 bill not going over well with Trump fans, other garbage humans

Don’t forget that the UK has the great social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the £5

@ playonwords

There seems to be a weird correlation between chocolate manufacturers (Fry, Rowntree, Cadbury) and social reform activism. Anyone know why that is?

@ Alan – I think both things were connected with Quakerism. Social justice, and alternatives to booze and to the pubs.

The Cadburys built a model housing estate for the employees at Bourneville with no pubs in it – a lot of manufacturers used to pay workers in pubs which they also owned. Not surprisingly the whole wage packet rarely made it home.

Ahah! Thanks Alan… somehow I thought you’d know!

Interesting how the whole concept of slavery developed and was justified over the period – I’m reading a lot from the 17th century when it was beginning to be defined, in the Atlantic world at any rate, as a racial category rather than a political one (ie; whoever you happen to have defeated recently) or a religious one. They couldn’t seem to make up their minds whether you could enslave people who weren’t Christians so long as you didn’t convert them – which became inconvenient – or that you ought to enslave people in order to make them into Christians…

@ bluecat

The case is important in jurisprudence terms because it illustrated the schism between a strict legalistic approach (is this just a contract/property/international law matter?) and a more ideological way of thinking (hence all the references to philosophers like Locke).

Ironically it’s more relevant to US law where the distinction between ‘strict constructionists’ and ‘purposive interpretation’ is a big issue with a Supreme Court that’s a lot more political than ours.

So Harriet Tubman was a “criminal” for breaking unjust laws by helping people escape slavery?

Gosh, these guys must really hate the founding fathers. And I’m sure they’d never join or support the Tea Party, since it’s named after a criminal act of terrorism. Lord knows these upstanding citizens are committed to following the letter of the law at all times, which is why none of them ever support things like ignoring anti-discrimination laws or joining illegal anti-government militias.

If Tubman is unworthy to be on the currency because what she did was, at that time, illegal…better axe all the Founding Fathers too.

ETA: Ninja’ed by princess sunny burn! It must have been a snark whose time had come.

If the racists/misogynists insist on putting a white male on the currency, I suggest we use John Brown.

In fact, I’m going to write my congresscritter and recommend putting Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20, and placing John Brown on the back (vice Andy Jackson).

Chrissle is a national fucking treasure. No one better to deliver that drunk history moment. <3

I grew up in Oklahoma. We got both Tubman and the Trail of Tears in elementary school. The narrative was “slavery was bad, Harriet Tubman was a hero” and “the Trail of Tears was very sad, a lot of Indians died and all of them lost their homes.” They did kinda gloss over how, eventually, white people took away Indian Territory too, and it wasn’t until high school that I realized what a scumfuck Jackson was. But still, I don’t know where the yutzes featured in the piece are getting their information about either.

@ Buttercup Q. Skullpants

I think there was maybe one paragraph about Harriet Tubman in our history book, but there should have been a lot more. She served in the army as a nurse, soldier, and spy, and led an expedition of 700 men during the Civil War. So much for the “women never fight in the military” trope.

I know, right? Even in California, we studied her, but pretty much only regarding her involvement in the Underground Railroad. I never knew about her involvement with the US army before now.

@mockingbird – yes, yes, I know, BUT it was at least as much about certain tribes siding with the Brits (and fair enough because they had a non-expansionist policy – which of course they would have broken later, but in the meantime a sensible alliance) as it was about racism. He hated the English more than he hated the Cherokee.

However, I’ve just read that he’s staying on the back, so the $20 should be karmically neutral. He’d be quite pissed that he’s on the back of some paper money with a black woman on the front. That makes it pretty sweet, too.

Woot, I am always happy to see a drunk history video, and I am so happy Tubman is going on the twenty~

I grew up with so many books on her, starting with those stupid valuetales books (I say stupid because the value of helping really undersells Tubman and Columbus doesn’t deserve to be considered to have any value, yet a very fictionalized version of him gets the value of curiosity in that series). I always drew rings on her fingers in the pictures ’cause little four-year old me thought she deserved something nice. Now that I’m thinking of it, I wonder if my mom still has all my books from when I was a kid, they were great. I was so grateful to my mom for making sure I grew up knowing about and looking up to women like Sojourner Truth and Frida Kahlo, and I attribute my obsession with history to all the biographies and books on suffragettes and influential women to her.

I can’t hear the hateful chorus over how happy I am that one of my biggest heroes is getting to be represented on a bill. It’s more than just symbolic, in my mind, if it introduces such an important and inspiring figure to new generations of children. It’s all another stride forward and another stride away from the hateful world these bigoted people promote. As far as I’m concerned, they’re screaming their hateful speech into a void that has no interest in them.