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One hundred fifty years after Harriet Tubman helped free 750 slaves during the Raid at Combahee Ferry, becoming the first woman in US history to successfully lead a military campaign, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons chose to commemorate her legacy by releasing a highly offensive web video titled “Harriet Tubman Sex Tape.” In it, Harriet Tubman’s character, played by YouTube comedienne Shanna Malcolm, can be seen willingly cajoling the master into sex, and even penetrating him with an unseen strap-on, in order to manipulate him into giving her her freedom. Meanwhile, one of Harriet’s minions, played by DeStorm Power, hides in a closet with a video camera. The video was released by Simmons’s new YouTube network, All Def Digital. At best, Simmons is utterly clueless about the realities of black female victimization during slavery; at worst, he’s a willfully ignorant misogynist who delights in minimizing the pain of slavery and rape of black women. This is one of the problems with the resurgence of black nationalist politics that inevitably follows the unjust killing of black boys like Trayvon Martin. With a scarily consistent frequency, black women’s political histories and needs are not only minimized but utterly discounted in service of a narrative of black male racial victimhood.