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International Underground Railroad Month 2023

September is International Underground Railroad Month. September was chosen because it was the month that Frederick Douglass (September 3, 1838) and Harriet Tubman (September 17, 1849) made their escape from bondage.

On September 17, 2023, the Navy announced it will name the ninth John Lewis-class oiler after Harriet Tubman. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said:

It’s an honor to maintain the naming tradition for our John Lewis-class oilers and Harriet Tubman is more than deserving of this recognition. She was born into unimaginable circumstances, but she dedicated her life to facing great danger and adversity, becoming a “conductor of freedom,” helping others escape slavery. In addition, during the Civil War, Tubman was the first African American woman to serve formally in the military. Her legacy deserves our nation’s continued recognition, and our fleet benefits from having her name emblazoned on the hull of one of our great ships.

The USNS Harriet Tubman is the ninth ship of this class of oilers. The class and lead ship is named in honor of civil rights icon John Lewis. This will be the second vessel named after Tubman. The first was a Liberty Ship, SS Harriet Tubman, built during World War II.

The USNS Harriet Tubman will give new meaning to “wade in the water.”

National Voter Registration Day 2023

In the coming months, you will be told the 2024 Election is the most consequential election since, well, the last presidential election. The hype notwithstanding, the right to vote is the right that secures all other rights. If voting didn’t matter, conservatives would not try to block access to the ballot box.

National Voter Registration Day, the country’s largest single-day voter registration drive, is September 19, 2023. Since 2012, more than five million Americans have been registered to vote on this civic holiday.

Your vote matters. You can register to vote here. If you are already registered, check your status to make sure you are #VoteReady. And on Election Day, be careful how you vote.

March on Washington: 60 Years Later

Thousands gathered in the nation’s capitol to mark the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organizers said the march was “not a commemoration, but a continuation” of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The march was convened by Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network and Martin Luther King III, board chairman of the Drum Major Institute. Co-Chairs include the NAACP, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and the National Urban League.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has on display the original three-page “I Have a Dream” speech that Dr. King delivered on August 28, 1963. NMAAHC Director Kevin Young said:

The words of all its speakers resonate six decades later, and we serve as witnesses to the bravery and dedication of its organizers. To be able to show visitors the copy of the “I Have a Dream” speech King read and improvised from while at the podium is an honor and privilege.

Dr. King’s speech will be on display until September 18, 2023 in NMAAHC’s Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876–1968 Gallery.

Slavery Did Not Benefit Black People

The arrival of the “White Lion” at Point Comfort (Hampton), Virginia on August 20, 1619 marks the beginning of 250 years of chattel slavery in America. The slave ship carried “20 and odd” Africans who were traded to the English colonists for food.

Hungry for attention, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through new Black history standards that instruct students that enslaved Africans developed skills that, “in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” DeSantis offered to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on whether slavery benefited Black people. Harris told DeSantis to take a seat.

The erasure of Black history is American history. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired a 19th century portrait from which an enslaved child had been erased. The New York Times reports:

For many years, a 19th century painting of three white children in a Louisiana landscape held a secret. Beneath a layer of overpaint meant to look like the sky: the figure of an enslaved youth. Covered up for reasons that remain unspecified, the image of the young man of African descent was erased from the work around the turn of the last century, and languished for decades in attics and a museum basement.

Through conservation and historical research, the children and their enslaved caretaker have been identified.

“Bélizaire and the Frey Children” will be on view at The Met in the fall.

Harriet Tubman in Public Memory

In 2022, Congress passed the ‘‘Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Commemorative Coin Act’’ which required the Secretary of the Treasury to mint and issue commemorative coins in recognition of the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth. Earlier this month, the United States Mint joined representatives from the Harriet Tubman Home and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to unveil the designs for the 2024 Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Commemorative Coins.

The designs will be featured on a $5 gold coin, a $1 silver coin and a half-dollar coin. All sales will include a surcharge of $35, $10 and $5, respectively. The surcharges will be paid equally to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the Harriet Tubman Home “for the purpose of accomplishing and advancing their missions.”

Woodrow Keown Jr., president & COO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, said:

Harriet Tubman is one of the most revered figures in American history and now she is being rightly enshrined among our nation’s pantheon of heroes. She will soon be indelibly etched into our collective heritage as a triumphant, resilient champion of freedom that reflects the true diversity of those who have contributed so significantly to our nation’s democracy.

In the birthplace of our nation’s democracy, the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy will hold a Public Design Presentation Meeting for Philadelphia’s permanent Harriet Tubman statue. The public is invited to join the virtual meeting during which the five semi-finalist artists will “present their design images, renderings, and/or models and hear them describe their vision for the Harriet Tubman statue.”

Harriet Tubman will be the first statue of a Black female historical figure in the City’s vast public art collection. RSVP here for the Zoom meeting on Thursday, August 3 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

Happy 5th of July

“What to the slave is the Fourth of July,” asked Frederick Douglass in a speech at an Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852.

In a 6-to-3 vote, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action. In her dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote:

Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented “intergenerational transmission of inequality” that still plagues our citizenry.

What to the descendants of the enslaved is Independence Day? “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”

Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins (1849–1908)

From the self-emancipated march to freedom to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, music has been vital to the Black experience.

As Black Music Month comes to a close, I want to highlight Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins.

From Blackpast.org:

Thomas Greene Wiggins was born May 25, 1849 to Mungo and Charity Wiggins, slaves on a Georgia plantation. He was blind and autistic but a musical genius with a phenomenal memory. In 1850 Tom, his parents, and two brothers were sold to James Neil Bethune, a lawyer and newspaper editor in Columbus, Georgia. Young Tom was fascinated by music and other sounds, and could pick out tunes on the piano by the age of four. He made his concert debut at eight, performing in Atlanta. In 1858 Tom was hired out as a slave-musician, at a price of $15,000.

In 1859, at the age of 10, he became the first African American performer to play at the White House when he gave a concert before President James Buchanan.

The musical phenomenon is memorialized in Elton John’s “The Ballad of Blind Tom.”