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Which Woman Should Appear On $10 Bill? Lew Will Weigh Ideas


$10Harriet Tubman? Eleanor Roosevelt? Rosa Parks?

Speculation is rising over which American woman will be chosen to grace the $10 bill, which has featured Alexander Hamilton since 1929. The answer will come sometime after summer, after Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew considers suggestions from anyone who wants to offer one — through town hall meetings or online.

Whoever is chosen by Lew will be the first woman to appear on U.S. paper currency in more than a century.

The bill’s actual design won’t be unveiled until 2020, the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

Treasury has created a website — www.thenew10.treasury.gov — for Americans to submit suggestions. The public can propose both which woman should be chosen and which symbols of democracy should be included in the redesigned bill. Comments can also be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #TheNew10.

“We are asking the American people to tell us what democracy means to them,” Lew told reporters. “Their feedback will shape what the new bill will look like.”

The first information sessions will be in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 24 and Washington on July 15 at the two printing facilities that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing uses to produce the nation’s paper money.

The effort to put a woman on the currency began as a grassroots effort with a group known as Women on 20s launching a petition campaign to urge President Barack Obama to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with a woman.

Last summer, Obama expressed support for the effort. He said he had received a letter from a young girl suggesting such a change.

In a speech Thursday, Lew said the young letter writer, a 9-year-old third grader named Sofia, had triggered an outpouring of support.

“Sofia’s letter clearly struck a chord with Americans across the country, with thousands of our fellow citizens responding to her letter,” Lew told an audience at the National Archives where he outlined plans for the currency change, calling it a “small step with big significance.”

Lew offered no hints of whom he might choose, saying he first wanted to hear the views of the public. But the Women on 20s group conducted an Internet poll in which more than 600,000 votes were cast. Harriet Tubman, the African-American abolitionist, emerged as the winner.

In that poll, which asked people to first pick three finalists from among 15 women, Eleanor Roosevelt came in second, followed by Rosa Parks, the civil rights heroine, and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to serve as chief of the Cherokee Nation.

By law, only the portrait of a deceased person can appear on the nation’s banknotes.

Treasury officials said that Hamilton, the nation’s first Treasury secretary, will not disappear from the redesigned $10 bill. They said they expect his image to be retained in some way on the redesigned bill.

“There are many options for continuing to honor Hamilton,” the Treasury said in a fact sheet. “While one option is producing two bills, we are exploring a variety of possibilities.”

The redesign of the $10 bill is the first since 2006, when new security features were added. A change in portraits on the bills is rare. The last such changes occurred between 1914 and 1928.

The paper currency has been an all-male domain for more than a century. The last woman featured on U.S. paper money was Martha Washington, who appeared on a dollar silver certificate from 1891 to 1896. The only other woman featured on U.S. paper money was Pocahontas, from 1865 to 1869. Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea are on dollar coins.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, who is sponsoring legislation to put a woman on the $20 bill, praised Lew for his decision to put a woman on the $10.

“While it may not be the $20 bill, make no mistake,” Shaheen said. “This is a historic announcement.”

(AP)



10 Responses

  1. 1. The Congress has the last word on this.

    2. Lew will probably remain in office only through the end of next year, and they are talking about a change taking place in 2020.

    3. The last time they used the money to send a political message was during the Carter admiistration, and it flopped.

    4. Given the falling demand for paper currency (since most people are using “plastic” instead), this may prove to be an unwise decision.

    5. It would be a lot easier to defend removing Grant or Jackson from the paper money than to defend Hamilton.

  2. Our nation’s moral values have long been lost and if it were not for the frum Yidden and some others, we would deserve to suffer the same fate as the citizens of Sodom. I would not be surprised if we will be seeing Caitlyn Jenner replacing Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.

  3. The frum oilum should lobby against this proposal sonce we will not be able to use $10 bill once it has a picture of a woman on it!

  4. Akuperma: what about the Sacagawea dollar which was also a flop, a political statement and released first in 2000?

    Putting a woman on a ten dollar bill will place certain people in a dilemma. They love money but can’t look at a picture of a woman.

  5. Cherrybim:

    I agree with you on this one. Katelyn Jenner would teich up this Sodomite/perverted dor perfectly. Today, if you are moral and normal, you are a bigot and something is wrong with you. The filthy media which is controlled by the Democrat/Liberal machine is dragging down the world worse than the Dor Ha’maabul! If Hillary CH”V gets anointed as President, it will mark the end of

  6. It is unfortunate that this problem for Charedim is caused by Jacob Joseph Lew, who claims he is an Orthodox Jew.

    Also unfortunate is that Jack Lew apparently does nothing to help poor Jonathan Pollard.

  7. Well, Alexander Hamilton, who is being replaced, had a Jewish father and attended a Jewish school so it is only fitting that he be replaced by an American Jewish woman. And as the tradition is to use the portraits of dead presidents she should be an American Jewish head of state. The answer is obvious – Golda Meir!

    This has the added benefit of ensuring that no Satmar chassidim will ever handle the new bill: they might look at the portrait of a woman but never of a Zionist :).

  8. I’m sorry can one of the ignorant people in this thread please explain to me why they think fun people won’t be able to look at the face of a woman on a ten dollar bill?

    Besides for the fact that as frum jews the value of the money outweighs any halachic issue of tznius…for the right amount of money anything is kosher.

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