Back in April 2016, millions of Americans rejoiced when Obama Secretary Jacob J. Lew said that Harriet Tubman, renowned black abolitionist, would replace Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill. During a conference with reports, Lew said women “for too long have been absent from our currency.” Since 1896, women have not been featured on major United States paper currency. In a note first issued in 1865, Pocahontas graced the back of the national $20 bill in an image, and Martha Washington, the initial first lady of the United States, appeared on $1 silver certificates in 1886, 1891, and 1896. Tubman, however would be the first black person - male or female - ever featured not as slaves.
During the turbulent 1850s, Harriet Tubman became renowned as a famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. She was born a slave in Maryland’s Dorchester County around 1820, and in 1849 she fled, leaving her free husband of five years, John Tubman, and her parents, sisters, and brother. From there, she made 19 trips back and forth from the South, escorting over 300 slaves to freedom without losing a fugitive or allowing one to turn back. Once, she proudly proclaimed to Frederick Douglass that in all of her journeys she “never lost a single passenger.” She also served as a scout, spy, and nurse during the Civil War. After the war, she returned to Auburn, New York, and dedicated herself to helping blacks forge new lives in freedom. She turned her residence into the Home for Indigent and Aged Negroes, caring for her parents and other needy relatives. In 1896, she spoke at the organizing meeting of the National Association of Colored Women in Washington, D.C. in which two generations came together to celebrate the strength of black women and to continue their fight for equality and respect. Tubman herself was the oldest member present, and was a mortal representation of the their strength and struggle. She died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913 at age 93. She is buried at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.
The proposed $20 bill would replace Andrew Jackson with Tubman. In August of 2017, however, new Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin put Harriet Tubman’s role on the $20 in question. He told CNBC “Ultimately we will be looking at this issue. It’s not something I’m focused on at the moment.” Instead, he is concentrating on making sure any tweaks to U.S. currency bills thwart counterfeiters: “The No. 1 issue why we change the currency is to stop counterfeiting. So the issues of what we change will be primarily related to what we need to do for security purposes. I’ve received classified briefings on that. And that’s what I’m focused on for the most part.”
Jackson’s historical legacy is quite different from that of Tubman’s. He serves as a populist hero and is still celebrated with Thomas Jefferson as one of the founding fathers of the Democratic Party. But he also orchestrated the removal of Native Americans from lands east of the Mississippi River, sending them on a march still remembered as the “Trail of Tears.” He also caused one of the deepest recessions in American history by preventing a new charter for the Second Bank of the United States.
He also strongly opposed the use of paper money.
This was a great article that really helped outline the suggested replacement of Jackson with Tubman on the $20 bill, which I had heard about but not seen laid out this clearly. I think it's strange that Steve Mnuchin is deemphasizing the importance of a decision like this, replacing a controversial president with a strong black woman of color who made an indisputably positive impact on the American people. In your source from the New York Times, I was shocked to see that "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declined to endorse the plan for a 2020 redesign of the $20 bill that was announced by the Obama administration last year." He outright declined this change that would bring joy and validation to so many, because he feels his department has more important issues to address. I really appreciated your straightforward, informative article on this controversy, and you have definitely left me with a strong opinion on the matter.
ReplyDeleteI found this article very intriguing. I heard about the possibility of Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 a while ago and have wondered about what it would take in order for the replacement to happen. This article answered many of the questions I had. It would be very impactful if this change were actually able to occur. Harriet Tubman was in a position where she did not really have power in society, and it would have been simple for her to decide it was too difficult to make a change. However, she remains an extremely inspiring figure because she risked her own life in order to help others and gave everything she had to improving the lives of others who were suffering. I think having Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill would have a positive impact because not only would it be more inclusive but also more representative of heroes in American history, who definitely have not all been white men.
ReplyDeleteLike the other commenters on this discussion, I think the changing of the $20 would send a great message, where the US actually endorses freedom for all rather than honoring a man who put many on this continent, American and Native, through great strife. One thing that struck my interest was that you said that Tubman would be the first black person featured on currency NOT as a slave. Slaves were actually featured on currency for quite some time. During the civil war, the Confederates' paper money depicted slaves working the land. It was changed in 1862 because it caused unrest among poor whites and the rich slaveholding elites. Before the Confederacy, individual Southern states also printed slavery on their bills as early as the 1820s (remember, US currency was pretty unorganized at this time).
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