(PCM) The news has just been announced by United States Treasury Secretary Jack Lew that an image of abolitionist Harriet Tubman will be replacing former President Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill. There will also be several other major changes taking place with the five and ten dollar bills as well.
While the image of former Treasury Secretary and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton will still remain on the front of the ten dollar bill, the back of the bill will now feature heroes of the women’s suffrage movement, depicting the historic march and honoring Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul.In terms of the five dollar bill, the back of the bill will be newly redesigned to feature a depiction of the Lincoln Memorial by highlighting key moments in the civil rights movement that took place on its steps.
Lew stated that it is the Treasury’s hope to have the newly redesigned bills unveiled by the year 2020 and at that point they will begin to go into mass circulation. The news about the newly redesigned bill comes after a open letter was penned to Lew and the U.S. Treasury Department by Ellen DeGeneres, Gabrielle Gifford and Gloria Steinem and other urging the department to consider having a woman honored on the ten dollar bill as well.
They wrote:
If recent press is correct, you intend to announce an alternate plan to redesign the $20 bill rather than immediately redesigning the $10 bill, a move that would require up to a decade of additional work before a woman takes her rightful place on the front of a US currency bill. This would undoubtedly be a major blow to the advancement of women. After all, the placement of a woman on the $10 bill is the most public sign that Washington and leaders like yourself support women. Furthermore, think of what kind of message you’d be sending our daughters by going through with the rumored interim step of putting a woman on the back of the $10 bill. Could there be a better metaphor for the second-class status that continues to limit our girls?
Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury and the current face of the $10 bill, personally drove the development of the US Mint, adding to his incredible list of institutional designs as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Two centuries later, Hamilton is still a star, as the success of the Broadway show based on his life story demonstrates. Secretary Lew, in 1792, your predecessor put Miss Liberty on the front of the first dollar coin and the $10 coin currency. Yes, Hamilton chose the image of a woman to represent liberty and freedom on our nation’s inaugural currency.
