With a change of administrations, it looks like Harriet Tubman is once again headed to the front of the $20 bill.
Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put the 19th century abolitionist leader on the $20 bill.
Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had selected Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, on the $20 bill.
But Tubman’s fate had been in doubt since the 2016 presidential campaign based on critical comments by then-candidate Donald Trump, who branded the move “pure political correctness.”
Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did not move forward with the decision by the Obama administration. Instead, Mnuchin in 2019 announced a delay in redesigning the $20 bill in order to redesign the $10 and $50 bills first to improve security features to thwart counterfeiters.
The unveiling of the redesigned $20 bill featuring Tubman, famous for her efforts spiriting slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, had been timed by the Obama administration to coincide with the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
Under the schedule Mnuchin announced in May 2019, the redesigned $20 bill would not have come out until 2028 with final designs for the bill not announced until 2026.
But Psaki told reporters during a briefing Monday that she and other officials were surprised to hear of the delays in putting Tubman on the $20 bill. With a change in administrations, she said the Treasury Department was taking steps to resume efforts to put Tubman on the $20 bill.
“It is important that our …. money reflect the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that,” Psaki said. “We are exploring ways to speed up that effort.”
Psaki said specifics on a new timeline for introducing a redesigned $20 with Tubman would be announced when finalized by the Treasury Department. Biden has selected Janet Yellen to be his Treasury secretary, the first woman to hold that position in the department’s 232 years.
(AP)
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8 Responses
I’m only accepting $50.
1. The picture they plan to use makes her look like a prim and proper speaker on the lecture circuit. She’s famous for work as armed resistance to slavery and as a government spy in wartime.
2. Most countries put people other than the handful of elite leaders on coins and notes (and the US does so for commemorative coins, sold only to collectors). Except for a few Indians (the current $1 coin, and the former 5 cent coin), American coins lack anyone other than the most important politicians or mythical figures.
3. The Jacksonian movement was significant for supporting full civil rights for Jews. Previously, in some states, we had a status similar to or perhaps lower than free Blacks on naturalized Indians. One can argue that by breaking down the class-based system that restricted the “deplorables” of that era, Jackson paved the way for the system of universal civil rights that came to pass a generation later with the 14th amendment.
Tubman was an amazing lady who had an amazing life. Her courage was unbelievable.
Jackson was no friend to civil rights. He was an unapologetic slaveowner, was famous for beating the people he enslaved, and was a slave trader as well. He perpetrated a genocide against American Indians, simply ignoring court decisions that went against him including even a Supreme Court ruling. In addition, he dissed expertise and packed the government with partisan hacks. He used federal money to benefit supporters and he supported high protectionist tariffs. No surprise that nine weeks after he left office, the US entered its worse economic depression it had ever seen, one that would last for seven years. No wonder Trump liked Jackson.
Don’t worry, once they realize she believed men are men and women are women, she’ll be un-PC enough and be removed
I’m all for replacing a Democrat with a gun-toting Republican, but Mnuchin was right to delay the redesign of the $20 “in order to redesign the $10 and $50 bills first to improve security features to thwart counterfeiters”. What’s the point of issuing a new $20 now, and then redoing it in a few years? Worse, there will then be pressure not to do it because of the cost. Better to wait and have the more secure design for all the currency.
To Akuperma: What is your point about a picture in which Tubman appears “prim and proper”? Do you think she should look like she just mopped your floor?
I’m glad this administration has its priorities all worked out 🙄
And, akuperma, as long as you brought it up, what do you think of the picture of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. I think he looks like he just left the hairdresser.
Who, besides dead presidents, should be on US currency? Supreme Court justices? Soldiers who died in battle? US Nobel laureates? Jonas Salk? Wartime cryptographers, like William Friedman, who did major work cracking enemy codes during World Wars I and II? Emmett Till or other victims of lynchings and racial assaults?