Last spring, a campaign called Women on 20s created an online poll asking who people think should be the first woman on American paper currency. This poll included women such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Wilma Mankiller, Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony and several others. Ultimately, Harriet Tubman won in the final round with 118,328 votes. For a while, it didn’t seem like much had come from this campaign, and it almost appeared as though this was going to end the same way that most Internet trends end -- with a lot of people having an extremely strong opinion about a topic and eventually just forgetting about it within a few weeks.
Thankfully, this wasn’t the case, as this past week, Jacob J. Lew -- United States Treasury Secretary -- announced that Harriet Tubman would officially be replacing Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill. At the time, it seemed as though it was likely that if this change did occur, she would be replacing Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, instead of Jackson on the $20 bill Apparently, people didn’t see the irony in replacing the man who founded the U.S. Treasury, instead of a man who actively hated the idea of paper currency. However, it was announced that Tubman would, in fact, be replacing Jackson within the next 15 years.
Additionally, several of the other bills will be seeing changes. In an effort to combat the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, several leaders of the suffrage movement will be added to the back of the $10 bill, and the back of the $5 bill will also include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt. The final designs are set to be unveiled by the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment in 2020.
Although this is a huge step towards gender equality, there has definitely been some backlash from people who don’t like this plan for many reasons. Many people on the Internet have been saying that they don’t understand why it really matters and have been questioning whether or not this change will really change anything in regard to gender equality. Other people have been criticizing the fact that the woman who is replacing Andrew Jackson won’t be Native American, saying that they should have replaced him with a Cherokee woman in honor of those who died during the Trail of Tears due to Andrew Jackson’s policies. One of the loudest arguments, as stated by Donald Trump, is that this is just a matter of political correctness, and that we shouldn’t be replacing an American president on the face of the $20 bill.
The arguments against this decision are largely based on fear of change, fear that truly needs to be overcome if we ever truly want to reach racial and gender equality as a country, and this change -- although small -- is definitely a step in the right direction.
