Congratulations ladies, we’re now one step closer to equal representation, with every dollar bill that we use. As we approach the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, in an election year where it is possible that America might elect its first female president, women will finally have a presence on American currency. On Wednesday, April 20th, the Treasury Secretary announced that Harriet Tubman would be replacing President Andrew Jackson on the face of the twenty dollar bill. It was originally thought that Tubman would replace Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, on the ten dollar bill, but it seems that after the success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton, the Treasury department didn’t have the heart to strip this newly beloved Founding Father of the honor. Whatever your personal feelings about who Tubman is replacing, it’s still worth celebrating that there will finally be a woman on our money, right?
So what’s the catch? President Jackson won’t actually be removed from the bill, he will just be moved to the back. This means that a woman who worked tirelessly to help African Americans escape the horrors of slavery will be sharing a bill with a plantation owner who owned hundreds of slaves over the course of his life. It is ironic that Jackson was included on money at all, since as you may remember from history class, Jackson was strongly opposed to both paper money and a centralized banking system.
And, technically, Harriet Tubman isn’t the first woman on American currency. We’ve had Sacagawea dollars (which my grandmother used to send me for my birthday, even though hardly anyone recognized them so I could never actually use them) and Susan B. Anthony dollars (which stopped being produced after the Treasury Department finally realized that no one was actually using them). There was even a short lived one dollar bill that featured America’s first First Lady, Martha Washington. However, there is a clear difference between dollar coins that most people mistake for either a quarter or Canadian money, and the $20 bills Americans use every day.
Why did the Treasury Department choose Harriet Tubman to go on the $20 bill? Because she’s who America said that they wanted. Last year, the Treasury Department asked for suggestions for the new face of the bill, and clearly Harriet Tubman was the candidate that people felt most excited about. As we learned in school, Harriet Tubman escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad, then returned to help guide other slaves on the path to freedom. Clearly her fight for freedom, her courage, and her compassion still resonates with Americans today, since they made clear that hers is the face they would like to see every time they spend a $20 bill.
Along with the new twenty dollar bill, other bills will be getting a makeover as well. The Treasury Department has decided to add women to the five and ten dollar bills as well. When the new bills are released, the new $5 bill will feature former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and singer Marian Anderson, and the new $10 bill will feature suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, and Alice Paul. Lincoln and Hamilton will remain on the front of their respective bills, and these figures will be added to the back to celebrate the leaders who fought for social change and made America so great.
Several of the candidates running for president responded to this news on Wednesday. Former Secretary of State and current Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton tweeted, “A woman, a leader, and a freedom fighter. I can’t think of a better choice for the $20 bill than Harriet Tubman”. Moments later, Senator Bernie Sanders also responded with a tweet: “I cannot think of an American hero more deserving of this honor than Harriet Tubman.” Of the Republican candidates, only Governor John Kasich offered praise for the decision, telling a Pennsylvania crowd, “She started a movement. She drove change from the bottom up.” Republican frontrunner Donald Trump suggested that instead of Tubman replacing Jackson on the $20 bill, she should instead be added to the $2 bill, or even an entirely new denomination. Earlier in the day, former competitor turned Trump supporter Dr. Ben Carson first proposed the idea of putting Harriet Tubman on the $2 bill. Have any of you ever used a $2 bill? I haven’t. If Senator Ted Cruz made any comment about the new $20 bill, he didn’t say it with any people or cameras around, because there is no news story about it like with the other candidates. For some people, these opinions about Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill are worth considering when deciding who to vote for. Even if you have already made up your mind, it is important to know where the candidates stand on this issue.
We won’t actually see the final designs for the new bills until 2020, and they won’t be put into circulation until years after that. For now, it’s still very exciting that change will take place in the future. I personally love that these changes are being made and that women will have a presence on our currency. I cannot wait to see what the new money looks like. There are still so many milestones that women have yet to reach, and now we can check “appear on commonly used denominations of money” off of our list. It will be lovely to see the new money in 2020, and it will be lovely to see just how many other glass ceilings women have smashed by that date, too.