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 didnt 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 childrens fiction. And very few people really know, at least american citizens we historians know who Harriet Tubman was. But that wasnt thats not the case with the american public. It was irony noted or the irony was noted in having tubman on the front of the 20 bill. And Andrew Jackson on the back. As many of you know, Andrew Jackson was not only a 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. Im going to announce everyone as they speak inasmuch as i dont 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, womens world in the old south appeared in 1982. And Harriet Tubman, the road to freedom was named one of the best nonfiction 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 awardwinning books for children, such as i too sing america, three citizenship centuries of africanamerican poetry. She is a member of the Screenwriters Guild and was an advise for for speechb spielbergs lincoln followed mrs. Linkons 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 im sure shes going to share some of her experiences on that summit. So without further ado, Catherine Clinton. Thank you. [ applause ] i do want to say its so great to be here at the 101st meeting being here last year for the very rousing 100th celebration i was especially heartened by the recognition of africanamerican womens history, its inclusion and this panel today is something im very grateful for and very grateful to be able to come here and talk about a subject about which im so passionate. I want to contextualize a bit my role in this. When i began my doctoral degree in American History at princeton, it was celebrations of the u. S. By centennial. And working on africanamerican subjects. And on womens 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 womens history hadnt 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 couldnt engage in National History because they didnt 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 childrens 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 sons 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 Tubmans 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 africanamerican rights, for womens 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 womens 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 rios, president obamas 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, womens 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. Im 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 africanamerican 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 governors distinguished professor of history at rutgers 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 were going through this relatively quickly because we really do want to have time for an extensive questionandanswer 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, africanAmerican History, as well as women and gender. Dr. Mill words first book, finding charitys 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 africanamerican womens 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 africanamerican 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 womens bodies. More specifically what are the wages of commemoration for women like Harriet Tubman. I dont mean the women that we know. I mean the women that we dont know . What is lost when we only represent one iconic person . Public memory is as much about what we want to forget as it is about what we would like to remember. As historians its 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 africanamerican women this has particular implications because even today in the public imagination, in public media, africanamerican 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 womenss 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 didnt come out of nowhere. It was organic. It had been bred in to her. She could see other family members who were enjoying lifes freedom. What we know about Harriet Tubman is shes 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 werent 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 arent supposed to be there . In my own work i stumbled upon a woman named Charity Folks, who was enslaved in the 1700s. She earned her freedom slightly after the american revolution. She earned her freedom, her childrens freedom and her grandchildrens freedom. And her family of annapolis, maryland, go on to be a very privileged family in both annapolis, baltimore and new york. And even with unearthing her in the archive, i had to contend with the fact, is she like other black women or is she exceptional . In some ways looking at Charity Folks and Harriet Tubman, we see two people, one well known, one not as well known. But their lives intermingled in some ways, given that they both had experiences with slavery and freedom. Harriet tubman runs away from maryland and then returns. Charity folks is enslaved in maryland, then freed in maryland and she lives in maryland. Should both be in some ways in slavery. Again when enslaved women entered the archive, they are usually recorded as pieces of property and as free black women we have much more information about them. 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 im 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 b