Currency makeover makes history
Anti-slavery crusader Harriet Tubman will become the first African-American on the face of American paper currency, and the first woman in more than a century, when she replaces former president Andrew Jackson on the $20 note.
The United States Treasury Department said yesterday that Tubman, who was born into slavery in the early 1820s and went on to help hundreds of slaves escape, would take the centre spot on the new note, while Jackson, a slave owner, would move to the back.
Introduced alongside a slew of changes to the $5 and $10 notes as well, the redesign was ‘‘a chance to open the aperture to reflect more of America’s history’’, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said.
A new $10 note will add images of five female leaders of the women’s suffrage movement to the back, while keeping ‘‘founding father’’ Alexander Hamilton on the front.
The reverse of a new $5 note will show former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Former president Abraham Lincoln will remain on the front.
Lew said the designs should be unveiled by 2020 and would go into circulation ‘‘as quickly as possible’’.
The long-awaited decision to replace the seventh president of the US with Tubman followed months of consultation by the Treasury regarding which woman should rency.
The debate began when the Treasury announced plans last June to feature a woman on the $10 note, prompted partly by a young girl’s letter to US President Barack Obama that criticised the lack of women on US currency, and a social media campaign.
Hamilton’s growing celebrity status, due largely to a Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical be featured on the cur- about his life, propelled an effort to keep the first US Treasury secretary on the $10 note and to replace Jackson on the $20 instead.
Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812’s Battle of New Orleans, was president from 1829 to 1837. He has been criticised for his treatment of Native Americans and his ownership of slaves.
After considering hundreds of candidates, Lew said Tubman was chosen for her leadership and work helping others.
‘‘It’s the essential story of American democracy, about how one person who grew up in slavery, never had the benefit of learning how to read or write, could change the course of history.’’
Tubman grew up working on a Maryland plantation and escaped in her late 20s. She returned to the South to help hundreds of black slaves to freedom, and worked as a Union spy during the American Civil War. She died in 1913.
Women have not been depicted on US notes since George Washington’s wife Martha, who was on the $1 silver certificate from 1891 to 1896, and Pocahontas, who was in a group picture on the $20 note from 1865 to 1869.