This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/us/harriet-tubman-20-dollar-bill.html

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Harriet Tubman Won’t Appear on $20 Bill Next Year, Treasury Secretary Says Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Is Delayed Until Trump Leaves Office, Mnuchin Says
(about 4 hours later)
A redesign of the $20 bill that would feature Harriet Tubman will not be unveiled next year as planned, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said on Wednesday. WASHINGTON — Harriet Tubman — former slave, abolitionist, “conductor” on the Underground Railroad — will not become the face of the $20 bill until after President Trump leaves office, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday.
Instead, it will be pushed back several years as the department focuses instead on improving security features, he said. Plans to unveil the Tubman bill in 2020, an Obama administration initiative, would be postponed until at least 2026, Mr. Mnuchin said, and the bill itself would not likely be in circulation until 2028.
“The primary reason we’ve looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues,” Mr. Mnuchin said during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, adding that the department would focus on imagery later. “Based upon this, the $20 bill will now not come out until 2028. The $10 bill and the $50 bill will come out with new features beforehand.” Until then, bills with former President Andrew Jackson’s face will continue to pour out of A.T.M.s and fill Americans’ wallets.
The redesign was timed to coincide with the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment establishing women’s suffrage. Mr. Mnuchin, concerned that the president might create an uproar by canceling the new bill altogether, was eager to delay its redesign until Mr. Trump was out of office, some senior Treasury Department officials have said. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump criticized the Obama administration’s plans for the bill.
Mr. Mnuchin announced the news in response to questioning from Representative Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat and the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. That April, Mr. Trump criticized the proposed change as “pure political correctness” and suggested that Tubman, whom he praised, could be added to a far less common denomination, like the $2 bill. “Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill,” Mr. Trump said at the time.
When asked whether he supported the decision to put Tubman on the $20 bill in the first place, Mr. Mnuchin would not say. Mr. Trump has frequently described Jackson, whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office, as a populist hero who reminds him of himself. Two months into his presidency, Mr. Trump stopped to lay a wreath at Jackson’s tomb at the Hermitage, his plantation in Nashville. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Mr. Trump told a crowd gathered there. “Does that sound familiar?”
“I’ve made no decision as it relates to that and that decision won’t be made, as I’ve said, until most likely 2026,” he said. He later added: “Again, it’s a decision of the secretary of the Treasury. Right now, my decision is focused on security features.” The delay comes three years after Mr. Mnuchin’s predecessor, Jacob J. Lew, announced plans for a sweeping and symbolic redrawing of the currency that would see Tubman replace the slaveholding Jackson on the face of the note.
The original decision to include Tubman in the redesign, a sweeping and historically symbolic change, was announced by Jacob J. Lew, who was Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, in 2016, following months of public debate. Treasury Department officials did not say whether Mr. Trump had a hand in the decision, and Mr. Mnuchin would not say whether he himself believes that Tubman should be on the bill’s face. “I’ve made no decision as it relates to that,” Mr. Mnuchin said Wednesday at a congressional hearing in response to a question from Representative S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Under the redesign, Tubman, a former slave, abolitionist and Union spy, would have replaced Andrew Jackson, the slaveholding seventh president of the United States known as much for persecuting Native Americans as for war heroics. During the hearing, Mr. Mnuchin said that he was now focused on enhancing the anti-counterfeiting security features of the currency, focusing first on the $10 and $50 bills. Designing new imagery is on the back burner.
Her portrait was to appear on the front of the bill, with Mr. Jackson’s image pushed to the back. “It is my responsibility now to focus on what is the issue of counterfeiting and the security features,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary down the road.”
President Trump has expressed deep admiration for Jackson, a wealthy populist who appealed to working-class voters and whom Mr. Trump described as “an amazing figure in American history.” Replacing Jackson with Tubman was both filled with symbolism and marred by controversy.
At the time of the 2016 announcement, Mr. Trump also described Tubman as “fantastic” but said that he believed the redesign was “pure political correctness.” Instead, he suggested her portrait be put on the $2 bill or another bill. Tubman was born into slavery, escaped and then returned to the South, where she led other slaves to freedom. She was a Union scout during the Civil War and later advocated women’s voting rights. Jackson orchestrated the removal of Native Americans from lands to the east of the Mississippi River and sent them marching west on the so-called Trail of Tears.
As of last year, the $2 bill accounted for 3 percent of all bills in circulation, according to Federal Reserve data. The $20 bill accounted for 22 percent. In 2017, speculation began that Mr. Trump might scrap Mr. Lew’s plan for the $20 bill when mentions of it were scrubbed from the Treasury Department’s website during a redesign.
Women have appeared on United States currency a handful of times, often on seldom-used $1 coins. Then, that August, Mr. Mnuchin made clear that Tubman’s future on the bill was in doubt.
In the 19th century, Pocahontas and Martha Washington were the first women to make it onto American currency — and the last to make it onto paper. “People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he told CNBC. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we’ve got a lot more important issues to focus on.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, recently introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act and called on the Treasury Department to offer clarity on the status of the $20 bill. The legislation, if passed, would direct the department to place the likeness of Tubman on $20 Federal Reserve notes printed after Dec. 31, 2020.
“There is no excuse for the administration’s failure to make this redesign a priority,” Ms. Shaheen said. “Sadly, this delay sends an unmistakable message to women and girls, and communities of color, who were promised they’d see Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.”
Women have appeared on United States currency a handful of times, often on seldom-used $1 coins. In the 19th century, Pocahontas and Martha Washington were the first women to make it onto American currency — and the last to make it onto paper.
Pocahontas appeared among a group of men on the $10 bill and the $20 bill in the late 19th century. Washington was on $1 silver certificates in 1886, 1891 and 1896.Pocahontas appeared among a group of men on the $10 bill and the $20 bill in the late 19th century. Washington was on $1 silver certificates in 1886, 1891 and 1896.
The suffragist Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to appear on an American coin: a dollar produced from 1979-81 and again, briefly, in 1999. But originally, the Treasury planned to depict the allegorical Lady Liberty. It was not until legislators and activists objected that the department agreed to honor a real-life woman. The suffragist Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to appear on an American coin: a dollar produced from 1979-81 and again, briefly, in 1999. But originally, the Treasury Department planned to depict the allegorical Lady Liberty. It was not until legislators and activists objected that the department agreed to honor a real-life woman.
Next came Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark. In 2015, Mr. Lew started a 10-month process to develop a plan that was initially intended to honor a female historical figure on the $10 bill, replacing Alexander Hamilton. After much controversy, consternation and public debate — in part because of the popularity of the musical “Hamilton,” which is based on the secretary’s life — Mr. Lew changed course and instead made plans for a vignette of suffragists to be put on the back of the $10 and for Tubman to become the face of the $20 bill.
In 1997, Congress instructed the Treasury to develop a new $1 coin, and Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin told a committee to choose a woman to headline it. On Wednesday, activists from the group Women on 20s, which helped push Tubman to the prominence of the $20 bill, were disappointed but hopeful that the delay would avoid meddling from Mr. Trump.
The coin has been minted since 2000. But from 2002 to 2008, and from 2012 on, it has been produced only for collectors, not for general circulation, because it was so unpopular that large quantities piled up unused. “At Women On 20s, we’re not surprised that Secretary Mnuchin may be kicking the design reveal of the $20 bill to sometime beyond the potential interference of a Trump presidency,” the group said in a statement calling on Congress to pass legislation to add Tubman to the currency. “As we’ve been saying for years, symbols do matter.”
And in 2003, Helen Keller was depicted on the back of the Alabama quarter after schools submitted design ideas and Gov. Don Siegelman chose Keller — one of the state’s most famous citizens, born in Tuscumbia in 1880 — as one of three finalists.