Harriet Tubman, Black Woman and Abolitionist, Set to Become the Face of the $20 Bill
The Biden administration is looking to speed up the process of Harriet Tubman appearing on the $20 bill after it was pushed back by the Trump administration.
With the start of Biden’s administration, one of the very first moves of President Biden in office is to see the recontinuation of Obama’s effort to put Harriet Tubman, the 19th-century abolitionist, black leader and slave crusader, on the $20 bill.
As was originally planned by President Barack Obama, the US treasury is fast making plans to replace the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president (1829–1837) with the portrait of Harriet Tubman, American abolitionist, and woman suffrage activist.
The United States twenty-dollar bill ($20) is a denomination of the U.S. currency which has been in print since 1861-present.
In 2015, a campaign called “Women on 20s”, began a selection of 15 women leaders whose portrait would appear on the $20 bill. The idea was to have a woman featured on the $20 bill before the end of 2020.
The candidates chosen were Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, and Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation.
In May 2015, Tubman was announced the winner as she had emerged with the highest number of support with people giving her over 118,000 votes.
Following this announcement, Obama resumed plans to see the people’s desire brought to fruition. However, this plan was stalled by Trump’s administration for several reasons.
During Trump’s administration, Steven Munich, treasury secretary reclined on steps to move forward with the bill. In 2019, the treasury secretary announced a delay to sign the design owing to a pressing need to first improve existing security features on the preexisting $10 and $50 bill.
This schedule was disrupted following Mnuchin’s announcement in May 2019. He stated that the redesign of the $20 bill could only be released by 2028, and officially announced in 2026.
However, under Biden’s administration, the treasury secretary appears to think very differently. With Joe Biden back in power, an announcement was released on Monday by Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki to the press, stating that the treasury department is resuming action to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill again.
The question to see Harriet Tubman on the American dollars did not just start now. Dating back to the Obama administration, Obama alongside his treasury secretary Jack Lew had selected Harriet Tubman to replace the seventh American President, Andrew Jackson, on the $20 bill.
While some say that Biden is taking over the Obama charge for implementing this, others say it is a well-deserving move that would in turn reflect the history, complexity, and diversity of the American people.
During President Obama’s administration, the plan was to see the Harriet Tubman dollar unveiled, redesigned, and launched on the 100th day anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to participate and exercise their franchise across the country.
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Psaki told reporters during a briefing on the 24th of January that there was no reason for the delay till 2028. And the treasury department had resumed workable measures to fasten implementation on the $20 bill.
In her own words,
“It is important that our … money reflects the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that. We are exploring ways to speed up that effort.”
At the brief, Psaki mentioned that specifics for the reintroduction and redesign of the $20 bill would soon be announced when finalized by Biden’s treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, the first woman to hold that position in the treasury department’s 232 years.
According to the Guardian, biographer Andrea Dunbar Harris stated that Tubman’s presence on a new $20 bill would “drive a conversation about the value of black life and period from slavery to the present. I don’t think we can have her on the bill without us having that conversation.”
Who is Harriet Tubman?
Harriet Tubman was many things as a black woman, but she’s vastly known as the hero that fought for change and her long walk to emancipation and liberation of the Black people. She was the Moses of her people, a 19th-century abolitionist and political activist who escaped slavery and went on to rescue hundreds of other black slaves through a train network called the Underground Railroad.
She was born into slavery in the year 1822 to Benjamin Ross and Harriet Rit. As the fourth of nine children, she grew up a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, working tirelessly in a cotton field where she was severely injured with an iron weight thrown by an overseer that gave her visions about God and spells.
In 1849, she escaped from the slave plantation and ran off into the north to the state of Pennsylvania.
After making a successful attempt out of Maryland, she started her movement to and fro Maryland to rescue others via the “underground railroad.”. Making it one of the largest safe house movements used to move slaves from the south to the free estates in the north.
Before long, she became a spy for the Union Army during the civil war and later went on to advocate for women’s suffrage and black emancipation.
She died peacefully aged 91, in 1913, surrounded by loved ones and family.
All images are sourced from Twitter.com
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