Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced Wednesday that Harriet Tubman, an African-American humanitarian will grace the $20 bill, replacing former president Andrew Jackson. What was a long and tedious conversation, has finally come to a strong outcome.
After a promise almost ten months ago on having a woman on a United States currency bill, Lew answered with not only an agreeable decision, but a gender, cultural, and historical message that will be duly noted through everyday currency.
The Harriet Tubman picture on a twenty dollar bill will be one of the biggest changes in US currency within the last century.
Tubman was a slave born infant in Maryland in 1820. In 1849, she took a change to escape after her slave owner became ill and died. Although she escaped, instead of running and never looking back, she made constant trips back to the south, leading others to freedom.
Tubman used the Underground Railroad, a 90 mile long tunnel to Philadelphia, in efforts to lead as many that would follow to freedom. Tubman was successful up until 1850 when the Fugitive Slave Law was passed. The fugitive Slave Law granted the capturing of any freed slave in the north and required them to go back to the south.
Instead of conforming to the law and accepting the fate of being a slave the rest of her life, Tubman rerouted the Underground Railroad to Canada, which outlawed slavery. Throughout her lifetime, Tubman led hundreds of slaves to freedom.
In a formal release Wednesday, Lew told Americans, “With this decision, our currency will now tell more of our story and reflect the contributions of women as well as men to our great democracy.” Andrew Jackson will not be completely ditched off the bill, although many Americans believe that his decisions during his presidency stemming all the way to the Indian Removal act grants his dismissal. Jackson’s picture will be on the back of the bill.
However, one bill is just not enough for the statement the treasury has in mind. “I had a kind of ‘aha’ moment where I said we’re thinking too small,” Lew said on Wednesday.
New enhancements are in order for the $5 and $10 bill as well. The treasury will also add “an image of the historic march for suffrage that ended on the steps of the Treasury Department” on the back of the ten dollar bill. Many featured will include Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul.
The $5 bill will incorporate portraits of Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.
The bills are expected to make an appearance in 2020.
