Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Cobblestone American History and Current Events for Kids and Children

Almost a decade ago, Barbara Ortiz Howard was paying for a cup of coffee when she noticed something. There were no women’s faces on the money in her wallet. She realized that she had never seen a woman on a U.S. banknote. She decided to do something about it. After getting input from friends, Ortiz Howard formed Women On 20s. Susan Ades Stone soon contributed her talents to help shape the campaign. The organization’s aim was to get a woman on the $20 banknote by 2020. Why that bill and that year? 2020 would be the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment—when women won the right to vote. And the $20 banknote worked well with that year. Also, the American on the current $20 banknote—President Andrew Jackson—had…

All the talk about putting Harriet Tubman on a U.S. banknote in 2015 led to some interesting discussions. People were excited to share their thoughts. Around that same time, the Washington Post tried to answer the question of how Andrew Jackson’s portrait ended up on the $20 banknote. The Post article informed readers, “We don’t know how Jackson got on the $20 bill.” According to the article, the answer was “lost to history.” That conclusion raised questions for Ruth Anne Robbins, distinguished clinical professor at Rutgers University, and Genevieve Tung, associate director for Educational Programs at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. How could the U.S. Department of the Treasury—the federal agency in charge of the nation’s currency—lose track of its records? So, they went looking for answers at…

Slavery still exists around the world. Here are three ways in which people are being exploited today. BONDED LABOR With bonded labor, or debt slavery, someone borrows money and then agrees to work until the debt is paid back. It is the most common form of slavery today. Most—if not all—of the worker’s earnings go toward repaying the debt. The lender provides shelter, food, and water, which gets added to the debt. The result is a debt that can never be paid off. People trapped in bonded labor live in horrible conditions. They also suffer from violence if they try to leave. Entire families can be forced into bonded labor for a debt that one family member owes. It’s common in South Asian countries, where many people are forced to…

This month’s mystery hero was called a “modern-day Harriet Tubman” after the Cable News Network (CNN) named her CNN Hero in 2010. That honor is one of many that our hero earned for her extraordinary work to help others. Just as Tubman guided people to a new life out of enslavement, our hero helps people find a new life out of crime. And the total number of women she has helped now exceeds 1,000! Our hero’s life has not been easy. She grew up in public housing in South Los Angeles, California. Daily life was filled with hardships. Then, in 1982, our hero’s five-year-old son was killed in a vehicular accident. Our hero had nowhere to turn for help with her grief. No counseling services were available to her. She…

In 1619, a ship brought 20 Africans to the English colony of Virginia. They were the first Africans to arrive in what is now the United States. Historians have debated about whether they came as indentured servants or enslaved people, but most modern-day scholars believe that the Africans were enslaved. Slavery has existed for centuries and all over the world. Slavery historically was used as a punishment to permanently weaken a defeated nation. After a war, a vanquished people often became enslaved to a victorious army. Early American colonists initially relied on indentured servitude to fill their labor needs. Indentured servitude was a form of unpaid labor. Indentured servants signed a written contract. They agreed to work for a master for a fixed amount of time—usually between four and 10…

Here are some key words used by those involved in the Underground Railroad. As you read them, notice how the participants used train-related terminology in their own unique way. Railroad trains were new methods of transportation in the 1830s and 1840s. The terms associated with that invention became useful code words on the Underground Railroad. Agents were people who sympathized with the plight of enslaved people and who knew how to connect them with the Underground Railroad. Conductors provided freedom seekers directions or guidance from one station to another. Heaven, the Promised Land, or Canaan referred to Canada. Passengers, cargoes, or packages were code words for freedom seekers. Routes, rails, or tracks were the many different paths—some by land, some by water—that freedom seekers took to escape slavery. Stations or…

RANAWAY from the subscriber on Monday the 17th ult., three negroes, named as follows: HARRY, aged about 19 years, has on one side of his neck a wen, just under the ear, he is of a dark chestnut color, about 5 feet, 8 or 9 inches hight; BEN, aged about 25 years, is very quick to speak when spoken to, he is of a chestnut color, about six feet high; MINTY, aged about 27 years, is of a chestnut color, fine looking, and about 5 feet high. One hundred dollars reward will be given for each of the above named negroes, if taken out of the State, and $50 each if taken in the State. They must be lodged in Baltimore, Easton or Cambridge Jail, in Maryland. ELIZA ANN BRODESS,…

Look closely at the banknotes that make up U.S. paper currency. We’ve included some of the commonly used ones on previous pages. What faces or symbols do you see on them? Barbara Ortiz Howard, founder of Women On 20s, believes that bills are “pocket monuments.” Women On 20s is the organization that is working to “elevate women to a place of honor in the all-male portrait gallery that is our paper currency.” The art on a nation’s banknotes captures its history. It also identifies the people and places that a nation chooses to hold up as national symbols. Who do you think should be on U.S. paper currency? If we wanted to diversify the faces on the money, which women or people of color do you think would make good…

The last and only time a woman appeared on U.S. paper currency as the primary portrait was in the late 1800s. First Lady Martha Washington was chosen to go on a $1 silver certificate. The only other historic women to appear on the nation’s circulating currency have appeared on coins. The Susan B. Anthony $1 coin was released in 1979, and the Sacagawea $1 coin was released in 2000. Alabama’s commemorative quarter, which shows Helen Keller on the reverse side, was released in 2003.…

Benjamin Ross and Harriet “Rit” Green were enslaved people. So when their daughter Araminta was born around 1822, she also was enslaved. People called Araminta “Minty” for short. It was only later, when Minty took her mother’s first name and her husband’s last name that she became known as Harriet Tubman. Harriet was the fifth of nine Ross children. Around the time that Harriet was born, Rit and her children came under the control  of Edward Brodess. Brodess had been a baby when his father died. His mother had married again, but she also died when Edward was still a child. By the early 1820s, Brodess was old enough to inherit and control his own property. He left the home of his stepfather, Anthony Thompson, and relocated to another farm…

“I had seen their tears and sighs, and I had heard their groans, and would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them.”—Harriet Tubman When Harriet Tubman arrived in Philadelphia in the fall of 1849, she left behind more than slavery—she left behind her entire family, too. She found a job and a place to live, and she began a new life. But she missed her family. Within a year, word reached Tubman that her niece and her niece’s two daughters were going to be sold. She knew that she could help them. She communicated with her niece’s free husband, and they hatched a plan. Tubman returned to Maryland to guide her niece’s family out of slavery. It became the first of more than a dozen trips…

Send your artwork and a brief explanation of whom you chose and why to Cricket Media, COBBLESTONE’s Pocket Monuments, 1 East Erie Street, Suite 525, PMB4136, Chicago, IL 60611. Or email it to cobblestone@cricketmedia .com . Please remember to put “Pocket Monuments” in the subject line. We’ll publish as many submissions as we can in a future issue of the magazine. And if you have suggestions about currency candidates and just want to submit names, send your ideas to Women On 20s at www.womenon20s .org. The organization will compile, publish, and share responses with the U.S. Department of the Treasury.…

In 2017, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park opened. It is located in Church Creek, Maryland, near where Harriet Tubman spent her childhood on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore. The National Park Service and the state of Maryland manage the site’s visitor center together. The front of the visitor center was designed to orient visitors to “the view north” where freedom was. The center includes exhibits, short videos, a museum store, and a library. Also nearby is the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway. It is a 125-mile drive that incorporates places and events from Tubman’s life and the reach of the Underground Railroad to the north. The byway begins in Maryland, extends through Delaware, and ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Not all the stops on the drive are…