Voices: Harriet Tubman— ‘Moses’ to the $20 bill

Reflecting back on Black History Month, I find myself looking ahead to 2020 or 2026 in great anticipation of seeing another first in Black history, one that surely will become a lasting part of American history—the replacement of Andrew Jackson’s image on the $20 bill with an image of the illusive and courage-inspiring Harriet Tubman.

Dante Wright

Harriet Tubman earned her place in history, Black history, American history, American Black history and any other labeled history—Black, or otherwise—as the “conductor” of the Underground Railroad.

Escaping the oppression of slavery in 1849, Harriet Tubman made her way North, to freedom. And despite the risk to her own life, she made at least 19 trips into the Antebellum South over the course of 10 years, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom, earning her the nickname, Moses.

Go Down

In my sanctified imagination, I can hear her drawing strength as she softly sang that old Negro folk song, “Go Down Moses.”

Go down, Moses

’Way down in Egypt land,

Tell ole Pharaoh,

To let my people go.

When Israel was in Egypt’s land;

Let my people go,

Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

Let my people go.

Harriet Tubman’s journey to this modern-day America in which she, a former—or escaped—slave, becomes one of a few American figures considered notable enough to grace the face of any American currency transcends the cultural oppression common to traditional American history.

Continuing the fight

Today, African-Americans have spent a lifetime continuing Harriet Tubman’s fight—the fight for, among other things, the inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution of United States, basic human rights and the recognition for their many academic, art and scientific contributions to this country. Contributions benefitted by a country that used an enslaved and dehumanized people to construct the very foundation of its economic prowess. A country that not only stripped a dignified people of their identity, but forced their assimilation into a new one.

By 2020, 155 years will have passed since the abolishment of slavery. Yet African-Americans still are “biting at the bits” to secure their place and receive acknowledgment for their inarguably sound contributions in America’s written and acclaimed history.

Even so, we have made our mark on America, and perhaps the wave of the tide turns. In 2016, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced the Obama administration’s approval for Harriet Tubman to appear on the front of the $20 bill, relocating the slaveholding former President Andrew Jackson to its rear.

If that plan continues, and the Trump administration does not default, Harriet Tubman will have achieved many “firsts”: the first woman, the first African-American and the first of any race other than European to appear on any American currency.

She shall rise

I can hear Harriet Tubman joining in with Maya Angelou as she boldly proclaims,

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

And rise she shall!

Dante Wright is pastor of Sweet Home Baptist Church—known as the Pinnacle of Praise—in Round Rock.