Harriet Tubman speaks: 'Rejoicing' about her face on the $20 bill

Harriet Tubman is here to tell you: She deserves to be the face of the $20 bill.

Patricia Humphries Fann of Newport would know. The journalist and educator has portrayed the ghost of Harriet Tubman for 31 years, retelling the Underground Railroad hero’s story in character to groups in schools, nursing homes and churches.

When she got a call from an Enquirer reporter on Wednesday notifying her that the Treasury Department had decided her hero would appear on the U.S. currency, her voice and Tubman's voice spoke as one.

"I am rejoicing because I know that today, Harriet Tubman is rejoicing," she said. "I used to say, I could feel the bones rattling from the earth of how she's feeling, because of how things happen to us as black people."

Humphries Fann has taken her Tubman role to countless places, from California to England.

"No one, in my mind, has been more courageous than Harriet Tubman. Think about it."

Her retelling of Tubman's life recounts all details of the American hero from a first-person view. A slave who escaped to freedom and then became a leader in the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists and sympathizers that spirited slaves to freedom. Humphries Fann draws on scars to show Tubman's suffering as a slave.

At The Enquirer, she hands over a CD with a track to play as she puts on Tubman's clothes and persona. It is "I Believe," a 1994 single by Sounds of Blackness. The chorus goes: "I believe in myself, 'cause I know I'll get my help from the power in the sky. I believe."

Tubman also worked as a nurse, cook, scout and spy during the Civil War and went unpaid, a point Humphries Fann highlights in her re-enactment.

"I say, 'All that work I did for the Union Army, why do you know they didn't pay me one dime, not one dime did they give me?" she said "But I say, it's okay, it wasn't about the money it was about the freedom of my people."

Humphries Fann said she makes sure to emphasize that Tubman life reveals an important lesson: don't let your circumstances define who you are. Understand history, gather your resources and make a difference.

Such is the life-long mission for Humphries Fann. She founded The Suspension Press, a paper that covered Greater Cincinnati's black community. She has a black history exhibit that is just waiting for a museum to house it, and she sells Tubman T-shirts and history DVDs (she welcomes potential buyers to call her at 859-431-8959). As she says, her work to emulate Tubman doesn't stop when the outfit comes off.

Her life as Tubman dates back to 1985, when she called Covington Schools and offered to portray a slave, so that younger generations could understand the history. Her performances were so successful that she was soon taking requests to do her portrayal at schools, churches and community groups, according to Enquirer archives.

Humphries Fann began portraying Tubman after a Cincinnati United Way employee asked her to read a script on her life .

Since then, Humphries Fann has made it her mission to teach others about the Maryland-born escaped slave who returned to the South 19 times and led more than 300 people to freedom, despite a $40,000 bounty on her head.

At The Enquirer Thursday, Humphries Fann reenacted part of her talk as Harriet Tubman, and she's already working in the news of her face on the $20 bill. But one part of her routine is not new. As Tubman, she relates how she eventually got a government pension through her Civil War-veteran husband, after he died. The monthly amount? $20.

But, as Humphries Fann reminds those interested in Tubman's views on the subject: It's not about the money, whether a $20 pension or being the face of the $20. It's about the work.

"I know she's rejoicing and laughing and saying 'Hahaha! I knew my work was not in vain.'"