Click to Open Overlay Gallery Women on 20s In an exciting, and overdue, bit of news, the US Treasury announced it is put a woman’s face on paper currency. After months of deliberation, the government chose Harriet Tubman, the Civil War-era abolitionist and suffragist. She’ll grace the $20 bill, replacing Andrew Jackson.
Exactly when this happens remains to be seen. The government moves at a glacial pace, especially when redesigning currency. In an open letter posted on Medium, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is hard at work creating new looks for $20, $10, and $5 notes, which it will unveil in 2020. That’s at five years spent remaking some very small pieces of paper.
At first blush, Lew’s announcement sounds like a victory for women, people of color, and their advocates. In addition to the Tubman $20, the ten gets a makeover, too. That’s the bill the the government suggested remaking with a woman in the first place, but that plan didn’t go over well. And so Hamilton will remain on the face (you can thank, or blame, the hit musical Hamilton for that), while the obverse will feature abolitionists and women’s rights activists Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul.The $5 bill is changing as well, to “honor historic events that occurred at the Lincoln Memorial in service of our democracy,” according to the Treasury . The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Anderson, and Eleanor Roosevelt will appear on the bill.
The government plans to unveil the new bills in 2020 will mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. But that’s when we’ll see them. It will be far longer before those redesigns go into circulation and into our pockets.
As with everything else in government, be it electing […]
