Clarence Lusane - Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy

ADVANCE PRAISE FORTWENTY DOLLARS AND CHANGE

In this original and brilliantly conceived book, acclaimed political scientist Clarence Lusane offers an incisive analysis of how racism and inequality shapedand continue to shapeAmerican society. Timely and significant, Twenty Dollars and Change deftly draws upon the past to offer a road map for how we might work to build an inclusive democracy in the United States.

Keisha N. Blain, coeditor, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 16192019

Twenty Dollars and Change offers a metaphor about two Americas: one striving to live up to its promise of justice and liberty, and the other mired in the bloody legacy of white supremacy. The historical arc Lusane provides demonstrates that the freedom struggle changes its cast of characters over time, but never forsakes its hope for liberation. A great and refreshing read.

Loretta Ross, author of Calling In the Calling Out Culture

Thoughtfully balanced and nuanced, Twenty Dollars and Change explores the ways that American hero and national icon Harriet Tubman resonates across racial, gender, and political divides. Lusane captures not only the significance of historic symbols, but how winning the fight over representation and memory advances the ongoing struggles for racial justice and democracy right now.

Janell Hobson, editor of Ms. Magazines Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project and author of When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination

Twenty Dollars and Change travels the back alleys of fear of racist white America. Harriet Tubmans image on the money is an opportunity to establish the symbol of democracy she wanted, one where actions led by a conceived idea of being inferior or superior are crushed. Clarence Lusane has put it where the goats can get it. An extraordinary and wonderful book.

Tina Wyatt, great great great grandniece of Harriet Tubman, co-founder of Harriet Tubman Day, Washington D.C.

Twenty Dollars and Change is a book for our times. As challenges to racial justice, womens rights, and democracy itself intensify, Lusanes sober and historically rooted analysis provides much-needed clarity and insight. Tubman represents the best that this nation has produced, and her life experiences and unrelenting commitment to equality echo in todays struggle for reforming criminal justice, dismantling white supremacist symbols, protecting voting rights, and securing health equity. Lusane expertly links these campaigns and calls for the nation to implement the principles it claims to hold. As Lusane argues, yes, Andrew Jackson should be replaced by Harriet Tubman. And, yes, gender and racial inequalities and marginalization should be replaced by a genuine multi-racial, inclusive democracy. Twenty Dollars and Change is exactly the book we need at this moment.

Congresswoman Karen Bass

Clarence Lusane has been a respected scholar activist and keen observer of the Black Freedom Movement for many decades now. His new book, Twenty Dollars and Change, offers powerful analyses of race and U.S. history and our present crucible moment. Writing from what he terms a Tubman, liberationist, perspective he delivers powerful and provocative insights that must be engaged seriously. A must read.

Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century

Freedom and democracy are the core values the U.S. advertises when vaunting the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Twenty Dollars and Change confronts the biases that privilege the few over the many in the supposed realization of these values. In this trailblazing study, Dr. Lusane builds an irrefutable case that justice in representation goes hand in hand with justice in policy. Replacing Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill parallels intergenerational struggles to end racism and sexism in America. Urgent and inspiring, Twenty Dollars and Change should compel the U.S. Treasury to make real our core value of equality for all with currency images that honor the contributions and humanity of African Americans, Native Americans, women, and all marginalized people of this country. Dr. Lusane sees Tubman as a Founding Mother of American democracy yet to come, and offers a persuasive case how a new twenty and change can get us there sooner.

Barbara Ortiz Howard, Founder, Women On 20s

This brisk and intelligent study shows readers why the question of whether freedom fighter Harriet Tubman replaces oppression fighter Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill is a matter of great importance. Lusane teaches us of the starkly contrasting lives of Tubman and Jackson, and captures blow-by-blow the intricacies of the struggles over changing currency before connecting them to broader ones in the moment of Donald Trump and George Floyd. He brilliantly insists, with the great Stuart Hall, that struggles over identity and power never exist outside representation.

David Roediger, author of Working Toward Whiteness: How Americas Immigrants Became White

Columbus lurched upon our shores with his men, rats, fleas, weapons of torture, disease, and death, launching generational waves of manifest destiny, white supremacy, and genocide in this red quarter of Mother Earth, ravaging her children and poisoning her waters, lands, and skies. Inquisition-era religious and discovery doctrines, gold fever, land lust, and settler/slaver colonialism shaped the United States, defined its symbols, and drove its policies of privilege and exclusion. This history of foundational injustice is carefully analyzed in the courageous and unflinching Twenty Dollars and Change, which also joyfully celebrates ongoing resistance to all racism, sexism, and bigotry. By lifting up the life and legacy of the self-emancipated Harriet Tubmanwho heroically freed scores of others from slavery through the Underground Railroad, despite her own conditions of illiteracy and disability, and who became an unstoppable liberator and warrior for equalityClarence Lusane reminds us that we all can contribute enormously to a more perfect society based on the dignity, diversity, and democracy of the peoples. In that spirit, and with great clarity and integrity, Lusane calls on us to wake up, fight back, and never back down until justice prevails.

Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee), writer/editor, curator, Native & Indigenous Rights advocate, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

HARRIET TUBMAN AND THE ONGOING FIGHT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY

CLARENCE LUSANE

City Lights Books | Open Media Series

San Francisco

Copyright 2022 by Clarence Lusane

Foreword Copyright 2022 by Kali Holloway

All Rights Reserved.

Open Media Series Editor: Greg Ruggiero

Cover: Mingovits Design

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lusane, Clarence, 1953 author.

Title: Twenty dollars and change : Harriet Tubman and the ongoing fight for racial justice and democracy / by Clarence Lusane.

Description: San Francisco, CA : City Lights Books, 2022. | Series: Open Media series | Includes bibliographical references.