When Hip Hop Icon and Co-Def Jam founder Russell Simmons allowed a sex tape parody of the legendary founder of the Underground Railroad, Harriett Tubman to be posted on his All Def Digital YouTube channel recently, I like many thought, “Has he lost his pea-picking mind?”
The video, which has since been taken down by Simmons, depicted the 1800’s civil rights warrior Harriet Tubman, the founder of the Underground Railroad, using sex as a bargaining tool with her slave master in exchange for running the Underground Railroad. The parody prompted immediate outrage and you know this digital age, throngs took to twitter to make their concerns known. There was even a complaint made to the modern day civil rights organization, the NAACP.
Harriet Tubman was a former slave who lead legions of other slaves out of bondage from the South to freedom up North back in the 1800’s via a secret network of safe houses and routes called The Underground Railroad.
Russell Simmons has apologized for this error in judgement in a series of media interviews. Click here to see Simmons apologize.