Last Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced several historic changes in the design of American currency, one of which included a plan to replace former president and slaveholder Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with the face of Harriet Tubman, escaped slave and influential abolitionist.
But the $20 isn’t the only bill that’s getting a new makeover—the back of the new $5 bill will also feature the images of Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while the reverse side of the new $10 bill will feature the faces of five suffrage leaders: Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony. The final redesigns will be unveiled in 2020—just in time for the 100th year anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which established women’s suffrage across the country.
There is no doubt that this is an enormous step—not just for women and for African-Americans in particular, but for the entirety of the country as a whole. Frankly, we’ve waited long enough to have women—as well as civil rights leaders—included on the federal currency; it’s time, after all, for the face of this nation’s dollar bills to catch up with the drastic changes that the country has undergone. And what better way to illustrate a powerful reflection of such a change than to showcase the image of Harriet Tubman, a black woman who served as a great leader of the Underground Railroad as well as a hero of the Union intelligence effort during the Civil War?
Yet the announcement of this monumental change has not been met without backlash or opposition. Lew’s decision has in fact provoked a variety of responses, spurring a heated debate across the country; some have criticized the idea that Harriet Tubman should represent U.S. currency at all, contending that the move is insulting to Tubman’s legacy—for an abolitionist icon who resisted the foundation of American capitalism, they argue, should not become a symbol of the very oppressive system that she fought. And while the news that a female abolitionist hero was replacing Andrew Jackson—a slave-owner and ethnic cleanser—on U.S. currency was initially celebrated, many felt that the significance of this powerful statement was diminished by the discovery that Jackson wouldn’t be entirely removed from the $20, but simply bumped to the back of the bill—and that Tubman would subsequently be forced to share it with a man whose partial legacy was the genocide of Native Americans.
Yet, despite these controversial issues, the undeniable truth boils down to the fact that there is more to our country’s story than the solidly male fraternity currently represented on U.S. bills—more to the rich history of our people than national heroes like Washington, Jefferson and Jackson, who, while undoubtedly fought courageously to gain and preserve freedom, denied it to others at the same time. This is precisely why the decision to recognize the life of a formerly enslaved woman on federal currency—as well as those of various leaders of women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights movement—still remains a powerful statement and a revolutionary change.
Overall, we should see the hallmark of this monumental change as addition, not subtraction; for even though Jackson’s image will be retained on the reverse side of the $20 bill, and even though the images of various women suffragists and civil rights leaders will seemingly be forced to take a “backseat” on the other notes, the pivotal (and long overdue) change to the federal currency is significant in that it will embroider even more of the nation’s rich history and diversity, and the heroic figures who contributed to its creation, into the most widely used of government documents. It’s a powerful statement that says something meaningful about the drastic changes and essential growth our nation has undergone through all these years—and it’s not just our wallets, in the end, that will have a more well-rounded and complete view of who we are and how we got here.
