Lady Liberty coin honours blacks
COMMEMORATIVE $100 COIN MARKS THE FIRST TIME ICON DEPICTED AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHITE ON CURRENCY
he US Mint will release a commemorative gold coin in April that will feature Lady Liberty as a black woman, marking the first time she has been depicted as anything other than white on the nation’s currency.
The coin, with a $100 (Dh367) face value, will commemorate the 225th anniversary of the mint’s coin production, the mint and the Treasury Department announced Thursday. Going on sale from April 6, it will be 24-karat and weigh about an ounce.
It is part of a series of commemorative coins that will be released every two years. Future ones will show Lady Liberty as Asian, Hispanic and Indian “to reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States,” the mint said in a statement.
The announcement comes at a pivotal cultural moment for the United States, a week away from a transfer of power following a bruising election dominated by debates about immigration, race and political correctness.
And Lady Liberty is among the most potent of US symbols. Her best-known depiction, a gift from France in 1886, stands in New York Harbour, a giant statue of a woman with white European features beckoning with a lamp to the refugees of the world.
“Part of our intent was to honour our tradition and heritage,” Rhett Jeppson, the principal deputy director of the mint, said in a phone interview on Friday. “But we also think it’s always worthwhile to have a conversation about liberty, and we certainly have started that conversation.”
Collectors’ item
Do not expect to see anyone spending the coins at the store. Coins like this do not circulate for everyday use, but are minted for collectors in limited quantities. There will be 100,000 of them with the black Lady Liberty. They will sell for far more than face value, depending on the value of gold, currently more than $1,000 an ounce.
“As we as a nation continue to evolve, so does Liberty’s representation,” Elisa Basnight, the chief of staff at the mint, said at a presentation on Thursday in Washington.
The coin’s head (what the mint calls the obverse) was designed by Justin Kunz and engraved by Phebe Hemphill, and it shows a profile of Lady Liberty with a crown of stars that holds back her hair. The tail (the reverse, in mint lingo), shows an eagle in flight.
Jeppson said that several women had approached him after seeing the coin and told him “she looks like me when I was younger.”
“I saw real value in that,” he said. “That we see ourselves in the images in our coins.”
The mint is expecting the coin to sell well, Jeppson said. Any profit the mint generates from the sale of its coins is returned to the Treasury. Last year, the mint sent about $600 million back to the US government, Jeppson said.
In addition to the 100,000 gold coins that will be minted at West Point, the mint will also produce 100,000 of what it calls medals, silver reproductions of the image that will sell for around $40 to $50.
The Coinage Act of 1792 established the mint, and it also mandated that any coins produced by the mint include an image of “liberty” as well as an inscription of the word.
Collectors expect the black Liberty coin to be popular.
Whenever the mint does something new, it creates buzz, said Gilles Bransbourg, a curator with the American Numismatic Society and a research associate at New York University. “It’s departing from any of the coins that have been produced so far,” he said.
Principal deputy director of the US Mint
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