Manhattan has pulled ahead of Brooklyn in the race to honor Harriet Tubman. This sudden turn of events has stunned those of us who have been closely watching the Tubman story for a couple of years, ever since a Brooklyn tour operator began lining up support to rename Fulton Street -- all nine miles of it -- after the leader of the Underground Railroad. After all, why does Robert Fulton, who revolutionized steamship travel in the early 19th century (but what has he done for us lately?), have FIVE city streets named after him when Tubman, one of the most important women in American history, has none? After doing the same math, Fred Laverpool, who runs black history tours under the name Braggin' About Brooklyn, worked hard to win unanimous support three Brooklyn community boards only to see his plan to rename Fulton Street be blocked by Community Board 2, which apparently prefers co-naming to renaming. (I say "apparently" because the board did not return my call.) With Laverpool bogged down in internecine community board politics (more on that later), Manhattan Councilman Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) quietly put forward his own a bill to name a 30-block stretch of St. Nicholas Avenue after Tubman. Instead of trying to strip a street of a longstanding identity, Perkins was politically astute enough to ask only that "Harriet Tubman Way" share billing with ol' St. Nick, much like Eighth Avenue is also Fredrick Douglass Boulevard or Lenox Avenue is co-named after Malcolm X. Not even the members of Community Board 2 are disputing that Tubman is worthy of having a street named after her (considering that there are hundreds of city streets named after slaveholders, there's something fitting about having a couple named after abolitionists). Tubman's place in history is secure thanks not only to her journeys along the Underground Railroad, but also for leading raids during the Civil War, the first woman to command American combat troops. "She was the Moses of black America," said Charles Blockson, a Tubman scholar. Blockson subtly sided with Manhattan in the great street-christening race because there is no solid historical record that Tubman ever set foot in Brooklyn (then again, you don't leave much of a paper trail when there's a $40,000 bounty on your head). Tubman was known to have been a member of Mother Zion AME church, formerly in Greenwich Village, Blockson said. Unfairly, the tide seems to be turning against the Laverpool, a nice guy who doesn't deserve to watch his two-year quest to honor an American hero get sidetracked by a pedantic, nearsighted community board. "Harriet Tubman worked for the good of all Americans," he said. "I don't think the same can be said for this community board." --30-- gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net