By putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, our U.S. Treasury is making a statement.
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Tubman will become the first woman on United States paper currency and the first African-American to be on any USA money. “I said from the very start, he would remain a part of our currency”, said Jacob Lew, U.S. Treasury Secretary.
The gospel song “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” was reportedly one of Tubman’s favorites.
Often called the Moses of her people, Wednesday’s annoucement that Tubman would be the new face of the $20 bill was met with praise by many Americans.
Harriet Tubman blazed many trails in addition to freeing slaves and fighting for the right to vote. The chapel has been designated a historical landmark by the Canadian government, largely because of Tubman’s work.
“I love Harriet Tubman, I love what she did, but we can find another way to honor her. Maybe a $2 bill, ” Carson said on Fox News.
She said of her faith, “I always tole God, “I’m gwine to hole stiddy on you, an” you’ve got to see me through'”. Lew continued, saying that he was proud that, for the first time, American currency would bear the portrait of a woman.
She used the Underground Railroad, a secret network of secret routes and hideouts used by slaves.
Several months earlier, The New York Times published had letter to the editor written by college President Joan Hinde Stewart in its June 30 issue under the headline “Don’t Diminish Hamilton”.
The abolitionist who was born into slavery died a free woman in 1913, and she will soon be known to anyone holding a $20. “The life of Harriet Tubman is really one of the great American stories”, said Lew. “It was quite a large community of slaves that came here”.
Ellen Feingold, the curator of the National Numismatic Collect at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History said, “This is the first time that Americans have had a big national conversation about what our banknotes look like”. Several other Christian leaders will appear in smaller images on the back of the $5 and $10 bills.
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Unveiling is set for 2020, the centennial of the 19th amendment establishing women’s suffrage. But the bill’s back will now have images of civil rights leaders who had a special connection to the Lincoln Memorial, including opera singer Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
