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Journey of the Harriet Tubman Twenty

Even though a coin is small, it’s a public space, and the words, images and symbols on it belong to all of us. When we pass a few pennies to a cashier, we’re probably not thinking about his presidency, but the Lincoln icon and the values of freedom and equality for all that he stood for are unconsciously reinforced. Sometimes, though, we’re reinforcing the wrong values. Every time we spend a twenty-dollar bill we see Andrew Jackson, with his large forehead and long wavy hair. He is embraced today by the White far right as a populist hero. President Jackson is known for his key role in a White land grab when he signed the Indian Removal Act that forced Native Americans to leave their ancestral lands in the South and march to current day Oklahoma. In what became known as the Trail of Tears, exposure to the elements, extortion, violence, disease, and starvation caused the deaths of thousands. Cherokees named him “Indian Killer.” He was also known for harsh treatment of his own slaves and fought to expand slavery in the west. While Jackson’s image takes up a small public space, it’s one that’s visited by millions every day.

Over the years, many have wanted to replace his image on the 20—this time with a woman. In 2014, business owner Barbara Ortiz Howard and journalist Susan Ades Stone formed a nonprofit group called Women on 20s, or W20. Their hope was to have a woman on the bill by the year 2020, the centennial of the 19th Amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote. Says the W20:

Equality may be legislated, but our culture must embrace it in every way for it to become a reality and erase the lines that have been drawn between us. Women On 20s is one small way to join Americans in a big cultural hug and acknowledge that symbols matter—especially the pictures we put on our money. When we have a woman on our bills, we will connect women to their value throughout history, literally validating their abilities and potential through the millions of bills passing from hand-to-hand every day.

The group’s initial list of two hundred candidates was winnowed down in several rounds, and in 2015, they asked people to pick one woman from a field of fifteen. The process was designed to encourage a national conversation—from coffee shops and dinner tables to the national media—about which woman was best for the bill. More than 600,000 people voted and Harriet Tubman emerged as the winner. Over the next year W20 increased public support to convince the Treasury Department to, as their website says, “Replace a slave trader with a freed slave and freedom fighter.”

And after its own deliberations in 2016, the Obama administration announced that Harriet Tubman, a former slave who became a conductor on the underground railroad as well as an activist who fought for women’s right to vote, would be the first African American woman on paper currency. Unfortunately, during the four years that Andrew Jackson’s portrait hung prominently in Donald Trump’s oval office, that president opposed this idea and his treasury secretary stalled the project. The Biden administration has since rebooted it.

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