A Treasury official said Wednesday, that Secretary Jacob Lew has made a decision to put Tubman on the $20 bill, making her the first woman on US paper currency in 100 years.
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Yesterday, it was announced that Harriet Tubman, an iconic “conductor” on the Underground Railroad who helped lead hundreds of other slaves to freedom, would replace former President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. She said the Fed would work closely with Treasury to get the new bills developed and into circulation. Starting in the Great Depression of the 1930s, left-leaning Americans transformed Tubman into a precursor of their own campaigns for labor unions, public relief and other causes.
It seems like an insult to make Tubman and Jackson share a bill.
Sofia soon noticed that no images of women graced the front of United States currency, and chose to take her complaint to the top. The Treasury Department had said they were looking to replace Hamilton with a woman. So, I’m happy that it’s Harriet Tubman, but it could have very easily been someone else. Trump said that Tubman could be placed on another bill.
Tubman’s brother Moses was one of the first slaves she brought to St. Catharines.
More Americans may gaze on the likeness of Andrew Jackson each day than on any other figure from USA history, in part because inflation has put more $20 bills in people’s hands than in the past and in part because that bill is the ATM standard.
The back of the $20, which now shows the White House, will be redesigned to include the White House and Jackson, whose statute stands across the street in Lafayette Park.
In a move that had social media going berzerk, our fabled “tough as old hickory” 7th president Andrew Jackson is being replaced for arguably one of the most influential women in American history – anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman. “In honor of that, we kick him off of the money”, said Ben Carson, expressing opposition to the change on USA currency.
President Andrew Hamilton will remain the face of the $10 bill will “honor the stories and the heroes of the women’s sufrrage movement against the background of the Treasury building”.
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Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks to Robert Watson, assistant professor of history at Hampton University, about Tubman and the history of the Underground Railroad. So are Susan B. Anthony – who will appear on the back of the new $10 bill – and black opera singer Marian Anderson, who will join Eleanor Roosevelt on the back of the $5.
