Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Harriet Tubman”

EDITORIAL: What Black History Month Means to GBN in 2023 and Beyond

EDITORIAL: What Black History Month Means to GBN in 2023 and Beyond

By goodblacknews on February 1, 2023

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN founder and Editor-in-Chief

Well, here we are, once again. Forty seven years after February was officially recognized by the U.S. government as Black History Month, and ninety seven years after Negro History Week was founded by Carter G. Woodson, “The Father of Black History.”

We are also, once again, deeply distressed by the murder of a young Black person (Tyre Nichols) at the hands of police officers. The fact that the officers and the police chief are Black this time around doesn’t complicate but instead amplifies the grotesque, stark, ironically colorblind reality of systemic racism — it is a pernicious construct of power and oppression that can be upheld or enforced by anyone of any color or gender or creed.

So, how do we reconcile the two — the celebration of Black people and their achievements while constantly experiencing injustice, inequity and increasingly, erasure?

If you think “erasure” is a hyperbolic, overused buzzword, please check out this PBS piece, this ACLU podcast or get your up-to-date Critical Race Theory ban statuses state by state on World Population Review. You can also Google what the governor of Florida is up to these days in regards to one particular course offered in the AP curriculum. and the AP’s seeming capitulatory response.

As Editor-in-Chief of Good Black News, a site which for over a decade has literally been dedicated year-round to the celebration of Black people and their achievements, I have been wrestling with this question for a while, particularly in the last eight months.

After the murder of 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY by a white supremacist in May 2022 and the continued downplaying of racially-based domestic terrorism, I felt depleted and bereft. Of hope, of faith, of purpose. It didn’t seem to matter how much Black people achieved or prospered or protested or suffered in America — we couldn’t even buy our groceries in peace.

And once again, the narrative of the “lone, mentally unstable shooter” was trotted out. One person was (rightfully) punished, but the racist political and economic system he embraced in its most violent extreme? It remained (and remains) steadfastly in place. As did the onus remain on the shoulders of Black people to be seen as worthy of basic human rights.

America quickly got back to the business of forgetting and moving on, even after experiencing only two years before what seemed like a watershed moment of racial reckoning after the police murder of George Floyd.

But here were are again today, literally TODAY, with civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump saying during his call to action during Tyre Nichols’ funeral: “Why couldn’t they see the humanity in Tyre?… We have to make sure they see us as human beings worthy of respect and justice!”

We do?

I’ll admit in many ways, I understand where Crump is coming from. “Show the humanity” has essentially been the GBN operating philosophy since 2010 — to create a site and space where we can see and celebrate our humanity, while offering access to anyone else who wants to take a gander.

But now, in 2023, I must push myself to dig deeper and firmly challenge why it should it ever be the responsibility of any human being to convince any other human being of their humanity. To state the obvious, once, and for all:

BLACK PEOPLE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

If the words above are not inherently understood to be true, why is that? Why does this have to be shown? Proven? Over and over and over again?

My answer, also obvious, is that they don’t. Not ever.

So, while I absolutely respect and still intend to celebrate the legacies of people such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poitier and the like, going forward I also need for GBN’s Black History Month and GBN in general to engage more actively in the interrogation and disempowering any systems, institutions or public policies that do not recognize or uphold this truth and all the basic rights that should flow from it (e.g. respect, freedom, safety, equality).

Maybe I’m not giving enough credit to GBN in its past and present form — I acknowledge that GBN has been helpful and appreciated by many for the way we offer information via the lens of celebration and positivity.

What I’m aiming to add to our existing ethos is more critical thinking and opinion about cultural topics and cultural content, boosting political, economic and social policies that are truly about protecting, serving and uplifting Black people, and working to upend those that don’t.

What will this “new GBN” look like, you might ask? Well, today it’s looking like me sharing this link to the NAACP Petition to Demand Educational Freedom in Florida. To quote the petition:

The College Board creates and administers the AP program. Join us in demanding that they:

  • Reject the narrow interpretation of Florida law that contradicts principles of academic freedom and autonomy in determining what to teach in classrooms.
  • Take swift action to make sure Florida does not modify the curriculum of the proposed AP African-American Studies course designed with the help of respected Black scholars, but rather, maintains the integrity of the proposed curriculum.

Florida’s current agenda of political interference in the AP African American studies curriculum directly conflicts with the values of equity, fairness, and justice. Our students deserve better.

To sign it, click here.

Additionally, I want to highlight Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project series now streaming on Hulu as well as promote the excellent “Intersectionality Matters” podcast by law professor Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw whose name is among the writers expunged from the AP African American studies curriculum.

[spotifyplaybutton play=”https://open.spotify.com/show/5CEVNLkyQ1kAx2MTSJZJLP?si=1d7be514acc241f1″]

I also want to give props to Beyoncé for officially announcing her 2023 Renaissance World Tour!  A definite bright spot on this first day of Black History Month, the efforts Beyoncé and her team are making via the Verified Fan system and its tiers of engagement (first priority given to the BeyHive!) to ensure real fans get access to tickets over usurious resale entities is for sure worth a shout out.

Frankly, I am tired of us being caught out there, and I want GBN to do more, offer more, share more and speak out more. In our tweets, reels, stories, posts, playlists, comments — however.

Maybe I’ll get it wrong sometimes, but with deep love for this community as my true north, may my faith, purpose and hope never again be broken.

“We Got Game”: Who Was the 1st African American Person to Appear on a U.S. Postage Stamp? (LISTEN)

“We Got Game”: Who Was the 1st African American Person to Appear on a U.S. Postage Stamp? (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s Daily Drop is based on the Thursday, April 7 entry in the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 and is the year’s third foray into our Black Trivia category called “We Got Game.” 

All due respect to Chuck D, some of our heroes actually did appear on stamps, the first doing so 82 years ago #onthisday. Question is, who was the first one? To read the choices, read on. To hear them, press PLAY:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, April 7th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing. It’s in the category for Black Trivia we call “We Got Game”:

Okay, so I’m going to read a multiple-choice question that you will get time to think about and answer.

What I’m going to do is read the question, read the choices — and they’ll be four of them — and then I’ll prompt you to pause the episode if you want to take longer than the 10 seconds that will pass before I share the answer.

Sound good? Ready to see if you got game? All right, here we go:

Who was the first African American to be featured on a U.S. Postage Stamp? Was it…

  1. W.E.B. DuBois
  2. Frederick Douglass
  3. Harriet Tubman, or
  4. Booker T. Washington

Now go ahead and pause the episode if you want to take more than 10 seconds before you hear the answer. Otherwise, I’ll be back in 10… Okay, time’s up.

The answer is… D: Booker T. Washington.

Although the other three have since been featured on USPS stamps — 1992 for DuBois, 1967 for Douglas and 1978 for Tubman — Booker T. Washington was the first Black person to be honored in this way 82 years ago on April 7, 1940.

After several petitions from African American supporters, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed to make Washington’s stamp happen.

Issued at a cost of 10 cents and celebrated with a ceremony at the Tuskegee Institute, Washington’s stamp was part of the U.S. Postal Service’s Famous Americans Series.

The most recent African American person celebrated on a postage stamp is sculptor Edmonia Lewis, who is the 45th subject of the USPS Black Heritage stamp series, issued in January of this year.

To learn more about the history of African Americans on U.S. postage stamps, check out the links provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

GBN’s Daily Drop: Professor and Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver – Quote on Women Freedom Fighters (LISTEN)

GBN’s Daily Drop: Professor and Former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver – Quote on Women Freedom Fighters (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on March 3, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is based on the Thursday, March 3 entry in the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 that features a quote from professor, author and former Black Panther Party member Kathleen Cleaver about the lineage of women freedom fighters in America:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, March 3rd, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

It’s a quote from professor, author and former Black Panther Party member Kathleen Cleaver from her 1998 essay, “Women, Power and Revolution”:

“I think it is important to place the women who fought oppression as Black Panthers within the longer tradition of freedom fighters like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida Wells-Barnett, who took on an entirely oppressive world and insisted that their race, their gender, and their humanity be respected all at the same time.”

To learn more about Kathleen Cleaver and to read more of her work, check out the 2001 book Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy, Cleaver’s personal papers that now reside at Emory University, where she was once a law professor, and links to other sources provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com, Amazon, Bookshop and other online retailers.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You could give us a positive rating or review, share your favorite episodes on social media, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

GBN Daily Drop Podcast: Drs. Joanna and Elmer Martin and the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum (LISTEN)

GBN Daily Drop Podcast: Drs. Joanna and Elmer Martin and the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on February 3, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Here is GBN’s Daily Drop for Thursday, February 3rd, 2022, about the creation of The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, MD, the first all African-American wax museum in the U.S.

(Also available for streaming and download at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed.)

Transcript below:

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of GoodBlackNews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, February 3rd, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing. It’s in the category for Black Museums and Landmarks we call “Get the Knowledge”:

Sociologist Dr. Elmer Martin and his wife, Dr. Joanna Martin, wanted to teach Black history in a way that would grab kids’ attention—so they did it with wax. The Martins had wax heads made in the likenesses of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Nat Turner, then used department store mannequins for the bodies.

They originally presented the figures at schools and community centers in Baltimore, Maryland but after garnering donations and grants, the figures were upgraded, expanded in number, and permanently installed at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in 1983.

Just over two decades later, in 2004, the Great Blacks in Wax Museum was recognized by the United States Congress and designated The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum. If you want to learn more about the Martins and the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, check out the links provided in today’s show notes.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com, Amazon,Bookshop and other online retailers. Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot. For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Site of Harriet Tubman’s Cabin Where She Lived With Her Parents in Dorchester County, MD Found by Archaeologists

Site of Harriet Tubman’s Cabin Where She Lived With Her Parents in Dorchester County, MD Found by Archaeologists

By goodblacknews on April 20, 2021

According to the Washington Post, state and federal officials announced that archaeologist Julie Schablitsky and her team believe they have found the site where Harriet Tubman lived with her parents and siblings in the early 1800s in Dorchester County, Maryland before she escaped enslavement and became a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

To quote washingtonpost.com:

The structure, of unknown form, was owned by [Tubman’s] father. A timber foreman and lumberjack who had been enslaved, he had been given his freedom, the house where he lived and a piece of land near the Blackwater River by his enslaver.

Officials said bricks, datable pieces of 19th-century pottery, a button, a drawer pull, a pipe stem, old records and the location all pointed to the spot being the likely site of the Ben Ross cabin.

The find is a crucial piece of Tubman’s story, experts said. And it illuminates the role that her father, and her family, played in her development into the fearless Underground Railroad conductor that she became.

The Underground Railroad was the clandestine network of guides, like Tubman, and safe houses mostly across the eastern United States that rescued thousands of enslaved people from bondage in the South in the years before the Civil War.

Between about 1850 and 1860, using stealth and disguise, Tubman made 13 trips home, spiriting 70 people out of enslavement, historians believe. Among those she saved were several brothers and her parents, who, while no longer enslaved, were still in danger in Maryland.

Her father was a devout patriarch who taught Tubman the ways of the marshy woodlands where they lived and struggled to keep his family together within the machinery of slavery, experts said.

Once free, Ben purchased his enslaved wife, Rit, and for a time sheltered Tubman and several of her siblings, all still enslaved, in his cabin in what is now the federal Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, south of Cambridge, Md.

Kate Clifford Larson, author of the Harriet Tubman biography Bound For The Promised Land, is quoted as saying: “That landscape became her classroom. Those years she lived with her father were absolutely crucial to the development of Harriet Tubman.”

The project began last year when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bought for $6 million a 2,600-acre tract adjacent to Blackwater and refuge manager Marcia Pradines heard the Ben Ross cabin might have existed in the tract. She contacted Maryland experts to see if an archaeologist wanted to investigate.

Schablitsky and her team went have been working in the area since last fall and dug over 1,000 test pits. Only recently, after scouring the area with a metal detector, did something finally turn up — a coin from 1808 — that finally lead them on the right path to the right place.

Image without a caption

The coin was found about a quarter-mile from where the cabin would eventually be located, and last month as the team dug further, more artifacts were uncovered from the 1820s-1840s time period.

The combination of records, location and artifacts finally added up, Schablitsky said. “It’s not just one artifact that tells us we have something. It’s the assemblage. It’s the multiple pieces.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/04/20/harriet-tubman-maryland-home-found/

Harriet Tubman Inducted into Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame; Back on Track to Grace the $20 Bill

Harriet Tubman Inducted into Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame; Back on Track to Grace the $20 Bill

By goodblacknews on February 13, 2021

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

On Veteran’s Day in 2018, I posted the following to the Good Black News Facebook Page with the photo above:

This is Harriet Tubman in her later years. She lived into her early 90s and of course is best known for leading over 400 enslaved people to freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

What is less well known is that during the Civil War she worked as a scout and spy for the Union Army, and was the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war by guiding the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves.

So GBN honors this Veteran on Veteran’s Day (observed), her grit, her bravery, her purpose. A true American hero who should be on our $20 already!! #patriot#americanhero #veteransday

As this nation continues to reckon with so much of its unexamined history, it is heartening to report that according to The Washington Post, Harriet Tubman has been inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.

The conceptual design of a new $20 note produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing during the Obama Administration depicting Harriet Tubman.

Additionally, the Biden administration committed in late January to speed up the process to get Tubman on the $20 bill as the Obama administration sought to do by the year 2020 (the plan was not carried out by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

This week, Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D) and Ben Sasse (R) in a show of bipartisanship sent a letter to current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to make the case that America’s currency should reflect the diversity of the nation.

No date for the issue of the Tubman $20 has been released as of this publication. Update to come.

BHM: Celebrating Baltimore’s National Great Blacks in Wax Museum

BHM: Celebrating Baltimore’s National Great Blacks in Wax Museum

By goodblacknews on February 10, 2021

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Most museums with a national profile are created and built by cities, states or institutions that work with curators and major funding.

There are also, however, a select few museums of renown that are built up from a grassroots level by community members determined to inform and educate future generations about history and culture from an authentic and engaging perspective.

Sociologist Dr. Elmer Martin and his wife, Dr. Joanna Martin, were most definitely among those select few.

Drs. Joanna and Elmer Martin, co-founders of The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum (photo: wernercoach.com)

The Martins wanted to teach Black history in a way that would grab the attention of school children —so they did it with wax.

The Martins had wax heads made in the likenesses of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune and Nat Turner, then used department store mannequins for the bodies.

They originally presented the figures at schools and community centers in Baltimore, Maryland, but after garnering donations and grants, the figures were permanently installed at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in 1983.

Just over two decades later, in 2004, the Great Blacks in Wax Museum was recognized by the United States Congress and was designated The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum.

Visit the site: http://www.greatblacksinwax.org/index.html

University of Maryland Renames Women’s Studies Department to Honor Harriet Tubman

University of Maryland Renames Women’s Studies Department to Honor Harriet Tubman

By goodblacknews on September 8, 2020

The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies has a nice ring to it. As of September 4, it’s the name the University of Maryland‘s Women’s Studies department will bear.

New UMD President Darryll J. Pines hailed the change in a letter to the campus community:

[This is] the first honorific naming of an academic department at UMD, the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. It is fitting that this heroic Marylander is now honored at the state’s flagship university.

The department is widely acclaimed for its unique concentration in Black feminist thought and intersectionality, and it is the only department in the nation that offers a Black women’s studies minor, jointly with the Department of African American Studies.

Historically, Black women have played a brave and critical role in social justice. Harriet Tubman’s life and her dedication to freedom and equality speaks directly to the department’s mission, now and in the years ahead.

Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland said to WTOP News  she hopes the name change helps to bring awareness to Tubman’s contributions locally and nationally.

Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass Statues Installed in Maryland State House

By goodblacknews on February 11, 2020
Bronze Statues of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman (via Kingsport Times-News)

During a ceremony Monday night in the Maryland State House, bronze statues of famed abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass  (sculpted by Ivan Schwartz of StudioEIS) were unveiled, according to ABC News.

To quote abcnews.go.com:

The life-sized statues were dedicated during a special joint session of the Maryland General Assembly in the Old House Chamber, the room where slavery finally was abolished in the state in 1864.

“A mark of true greatness is shining light on a system of oppression and having the courage to change it,” House Speaker Adrienne Jones, the state’s first Black and first female House speaker, said in prepared remarks. “The statues are a reminder that our laws aren’t always right or just. But there’s always room for improvement.”

While the commissioning of the statues was put in motion more than three years ago, their arrival coincides with new leadership in the state legislature. This is Jones’ first session as speaker, and the first new Senate president in more than three decades was elected by senators last month.

The statues, dedicated during Black History Month, were made to show Tubman and Douglass as they would have appeared in age and dress in 1864.

Both Tubman and Douglass were born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Tubman escaped from slavery to become a leading abolitionist who helped scores of enslaved people through the Underground Railroad.

Douglass also escaped slavery, and he went on to become an author, speaker, abolitionist and supporter of women’s rights. His autobiography, published in 1845, was a bestseller that helped fuel the abolitionist movement.

The statues aren’t the only recent examples of the state taking steps to reflect its rich Black history.

Last month, a portrait of Verda Welcome, who was elected to the state Senate in 1962, is the first portrait of a black person to adorn the Maryland’s Senate walls. The painting of Welcome replaced one of a white governor who had been on the wall for 115 years.

Maryland also has removed several painful reminders of its past in recent years.

In 2017, the state removed a statue of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court justice and Maryland native who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African Americans.

State officials voted to remove the Taney statue days after a woman was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a man rammed his car through the crowd of people who were there to condemn hundreds of white nationalists who were protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/maryland-unveil-statues-tubman-douglass-capitol-68878494

Bronze Statues of American Heroes Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to Be Erected in Maryland State House

By goodblacknews on January 27, 2019
Harriet Tubman (National Park Service); Frederick Douglass (George K. Warren)

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

According to wjla.com, The Board of Public Works in Maryland voted 3-0 to approved a contract to put bronze statues of American heroes and freedom fighters Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass in the Maryland State House. The statues will stand in the Old House of Delegates Chamber.

Maryland-born abolitionists Tubman and Douglass both escaped enslavement in their home state and worked in the North to secure freedom for others via speeches, protests and journalism. Tubman, known by many as “Black Moses,” went back down South personally several times to rescue and guide enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad.

House delegate R. Julian Ivey asked to delay the contract, citing a lack of minority business participation in the deal. “If the state of Maryland is going to honor Ms. Tubman and Mr. Douglass, we need to do it the right way,” Ivey wrote in a letter to the board.

The contract with The Christmas Company, of Sterling, Virginia, calls for completing the work within 390 days.

Source: https://wjla.com/news/local/maryland-board-contract-harriet-tubman-frederick-douglass-statues