Audio After The Jump
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — Famous TV judge Joe Brown is on the hot seat after statements he made about Harriet Tubman, but the judge is making no apologies for what he said.
Judge Brown upset many people when he was discussing the picture of abolitionist Tubman being placed on the $20 bill on a radio show.
"You've got nothing but male whites on the currency with one exception," Brown told WREG. "You've got Susan B. Anthony on a silver dollar, so you've got all white men, one white woman, so what do you do? Do you put a black man on there like Thurgood Marshall or Fredrick Douglas or Martin Luther King, one of the only three people the United States has named a holiday after? No. You take a foot soldier, and the foot soldier was a brave lady, but she did not die in the battle."
Brown is back in the national spotlight not for his unorthodox courtroom antics or his TV show but for controversial statements he made about Tubman on the $20 bill.
"You assess the value to an ethnic group or to a race, and this is ancient history on the status of the men," he said.
Tubman, an American icon, was born a slave and escaped to her freedom, making 13 trips back to free other slaves using a network of safe houses called the Underground Railroad. Her life story is being told in theaters now in the movie "Harriet." Brown said the film is also part of the ploy, and he knows from his days in Hollywood that feminists are behind it.
"I was privy to many debates out there where what I call 'feministas' decided that we hate straight black men with a passion," Brown said. "We want to dis them. I'm paraphrasing them, but they were actually saying this. We need a woman at any cost on a currency, so lets pick a historical black female so the liberals can't attack it, the black men can't attack it, and everybody will push it, and oh by the way whoever we pick, let's do a movie to push this woman."
Brown said if any single black person deserves the honor, it's Frederick Douglass, who's credited with starting the abolitionist movement.
"You dis him totally," Brown said. "You see, you've never done a movie about him. What you do is you pick one of our foot soldiers and say, 'The hell with the greats we've got out there.'"
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