Julia Roberts and Harriet Tubman
There is a story going around social media that an unnamed Hollywood producer suggested casting Julia Roberts for Harriet Tubman in the movie Harriet. “When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn’t be Harriet, the executive responded, ‘It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference.’” Excuse me, I think every American with the possible exception of Donald J. Trump, knows that Harriet Tubman was an African-American woman, a slave who escaped, and then returned South to help other slaves north to freedom. During the Civil War she acted as a scout for the Union troops. She didn’t receive a penny of pension for her heroic actions. Her second husband, Nelson Davis, was a Union veteran, and she did receive a pension as his widow.
Julia Roberts is an Oscar-winning actress who starred in Pretty Woman, Ocean’s Eleven, Mirror, Mirror, The Pelican Brief, and Erin Brockovich. She is not African-American.
Harriet Tubman was supposed to replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill, but that has been delayed.
Admittedly, as an ex-teacher with an expired social studies credential, I may know a little more US history trivia than other people, but I don’t consider Harriet Tubman trivial and I do assume that most Americans do or should know who she was, even if she died in 1913.
