Well it’s about time. Jackson is out, Tubman is in.
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Wednesday announced the most sweeping and historically symbolic makeover of American currency in a century, proposing to replace the slaveholding Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, the former slave and abolitionist, and to add women and civil rights leaders to the $5 and $10 notes.
Mr. Lew may have reneged on a commitment he made last year to make a woman the face of the $10 bill, opting instead to keep Alexander Hamilton, to the delight of a fan base swollen with enthusiasm over a Broadway rap musical named after and based on the life of the first Treasury secretary.
Good god – is that why? Because there’s a Broadway musical about him? Are we that dense?
Tubman, an African-American and a Union spy during the Civil War, would bump Jackson — a white man known as much for his persecution of Native Americans as for his war heroics and advocacy for the common man — to the back of the $20, in some reduced image along with the White House. Tubman would be the first woman so honored on paper currency since Martha Washington’s portrait briefly graced the $1 silver certificate in the late 19th century.
Trail of Tears, you know. Jackson was the guy who kicked the Cherokees off all that fertile land in the Southeast and in exchange gave them some nice arid plains in Oklahoma. Of course he made them walk there. Lots died on the journey.
The picture of the Treasury building on the back of the $10 bill would be replaced with a depiction of a 1913 march in support of women’s right to vote that ended at the building, along with portraits of five suffrage leaders: Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony, who in more recent years was on an unpopular $1 coin until minting ceased.
On the flip side of the $5 bill, the Lincoln Memorial would remain, but as the backdrop for the 1939 performance there of Marian Anderson, the African-American classical singer, after she was barred from singing at the segregated Constitution Hall nearby. Sharing space on the rear would be images of Eleanor Roosevelt, who arranged Anderson’s Lincoln Memorial performance, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1963 delivered his “I have a dream” speech from its steps.
That’s really kind of exciting.
Comments
11 responses to “Folding money”
It is… Hamilton’s connection to the Fed and the Treasury means that he really shouldn’t be bumped but Jackson sure as hell should
The original proposal was for a woman on the $20, because it’s a much more commonly used bill than the $10, and because Jackson was a genocidal bigot.
It was the treasury that wanted to tone down the proposal to have the $10 “shared” between Hamilton and a woman. Whatever helped push them back to the original idea, I’m glad they did.
Apparently the idea is to keep Jackson, but to put him on the back of Tubman’s $20.
To which I can only say, “Whaaaaaaaaat?”
Maybe that way Lew hopes the Confederate-battle-flag-flying loonies will be less upset? ?? I mean, everybody will be happy to have the slaveholder on the other side of the bill as the liberator, right?
I can only hope he’ll eventually realize, or be made to realize, that this is a truly epically appalling idea.
Possibly. I’ll take what I can get.
It wasn’t just who’s in and who’s out: there were logistical considerations, as well
The original plan to put a woman on the $10 was opportunistic: they were doing the redesign anyway. What they’ve announced here goes considerably beyond that.
And I do think replacing Jackson on the $20 makes a better statement than replacing Hamilton on the $10.
I’ve had a mystic vision – There will be a huge row about this even though most people couldn’t tell you who was on the money without staring at a bill and, by implication, couldn’t give a toss who it is.
It shall also come to pass that all manor of groups will get worked up about their particular heros being ignored and by 2020 the $20 bill will look like the cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Uh….there’s a musical about Andrew Jackson, too. “Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson”. It doesn’t quite show him as a hero, and notes very clearly the fight against the Native Americans, though it probably makes him look a bit more beleaguered and misunderstood than I would like. Still, it does serve as a decent corrective.
So it isn’t just about there being a musical. That sounds sort of like a throw-away comment to me.
I may be bonkers, but back in the 70s didn’t Susan B Anthony appear on some currency?
And then they removed her?
I don’t think that Harriet Tubman is a first.
In Canada they’ve had a women on their 20 dollar bills for about 65 years now.
Some old queen, I believe
Susan B Anthony, and Sacagawea, have appeared on 1$ coins. Which no one ever sees anyway.
Libby Anne had a post on this topic, but I am having trouble locating it. Martha Washington also appeared on various bills at some point, as did mythological figures of women.
The coin Susan B Anthony appeared on was a not commonly used $1 coin, whereas the $20 bill is very commonly used.
I’m disappointed Jackson is still going to be there at all. A lot of folks died because of him.