‘Disobedient’ stamp puts Tubman on $20
Treasury secretary delays bill rebuild for 8 years
A “Harriet Tubman Stamp” allows Americans to put Tubman’s face on $20 bills, despite the Trump administration’s announcement that the official bill’s redesign will be delayed.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said during a congressional hearing last month that a redesign of the $20 bill to feature Tubman – an abolitionist hero – would not be ready in time for the planned release in 2020. Mnuchin cited “counterfeiting issues” as a reason for a delay he projected to last eight years.
The news brought new attention to a previously released product: an ink stamp that can replace Andrew Jackson’s face on a $20 bill with Tubman’s likeness. The single-color stamp is designed to place an outline of Tubman’s face over the former president’s.
In promoting the stamps on social media, the product’s Instagram account referred to using the stamp as an act of “civil disobedience.”
For those who live in New York City, the product’s site says there are two businesses that serve as “stamping stations” in the city.
The stamp’s creator – Dano Wall, 33 – told The Washington Post that the project has been in the making since 2017.
“My goal is to get 5,000 stamps out there,” Wall told the newspaper. “If there are 5,000 people consistently stamping currency, we could get a significant percent of circulating $20 bills (with the Tubman) stamp, at which point it would be impossible to ignore.”
The Tubman Stamp’s website includes information for those interested in making their own stamps. It shows video of stamped bills being accepted by automated machines.
The Tubman Stamp website says that using the stamp is legal, citing The Stampede, an effort to stamp bills with messages “to protest big money in politics.”
“Though anti-counterfeiting laws prohibit the willful destruction of, and stamping of advertisements upon, paper money, pursuant to I.I.18 U.S.C. § 333 of the United States Code, stamped currency is fit for circulation so long as its denomination remains legible,” the stamp’s site says.
The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing addresses the defacement of currency but does not directly address the stamping of Federal Reserve bills:
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.