What Might It Take to Get Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/us/harriet-tubman-20-bill.html

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“I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted.”

— Harriet Tubman, an American abolitionist leader

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in the mid-1800s before guiding hundreds toward freedom via the Underground Railroad. For a moment, her legacy seemed bound to be honored in an undeniable way: a portrait on the front of the $20 bill, pushing the image of Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president and a slaveholder, to the background.

The new design was supposed to be unveiled in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. But it’s looking like we may not see Tubman on a bill for years, if at all.

This week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that a $20 bill redesign would not be introduced as planned. At the earliest, we’d see it in 2026. The department, Mnuchin said, would focus on imagery later, not specifying whether it would include Tubman at all.

The plan to give Tubman her own bill was an Obama-era initiative that had already been languishing under the Trump administration. Before he was elected, President Trump expressed reluctance about the move to replace Jackson with Tubman, calling it “pure political correctness” and suggesting she be put on the $2 bill, a far less common denomination, instead.

Trump has described Tubman as “fantastic.” He is also a known fan of Jackson, hanging a portrait of him in the Oval Office and likening their leadership styles. Jackson was the first populist to win the White House.

“People other than white men built this county,” Representative Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat and the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress, said on Twitter this week, shortly after pressing Mnuchin on the issue. Tubman is an “iconic American” and it’s past time that our money reflects that, Pressley said.

Despite the administration’s move, supporters say all hope is not lost.

In March, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat from New Hampshire, introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act of 2019, which would compel the Treasury Department to print $20 bills with Tubman’s likeness as soon as 2021.

Its companion bill in the House, reintroduced in February by John Katko, Republican of New York, has 15 co-sponsors, six of whom are Republicans — indicating the issue is capable of drumming up bipartisan support. It is currently with the House Committee on Financial Services, which counts Pressley as a member.

Women on 20s, a nonprofit advocacy group that has championed Tubman’s inclusion for years, expects that Americans will hear more from the House committee’s representatives soon, though it finds the bills’ 2021 deadline for printing too ambitious.

Nonetheless, Shaheen, who said there was no excuse for an eight-year delay, agrees that bipartisan support could pave the way for sooner action.

“Most of the groundwork has been done,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “Passing this legislation would send a strong message to the Trump administration that it needs to follow through on this promise to women and girls, and communities of color, and I encourage more Republicans to join this effort.”

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Here are some of the women who have appeared on United States currency throughout history — most often on seldom-used $1 coins.

Pocahontas

In the late 19th century, the Native American woman, who helped English settlers in the early 17th century, appeared among a group of men on the $10 and $20 bills.

Martha Washington

The wife of the first U.S. president appeared on $1 silver certificates in 1886, 1891 and 1896.

Susan B. Anthony

The suffragist was the first woman to appear on an American coin: a $1 coin produced from 1979-81 and again in 1999. Originally, the Treasury Department planned to depict the allegorical Lady Liberty, but legislators and activists objected, pushing the department to honor a real woman instead.

Sacagawea

The Shoshone guide who led Lewis and Clark to the West Coast appeared on a $1 coin that was first minted in 2000.

Helen Keller

The author and activist appeared on the reverse image of the Alabama state quarter in 2003.

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Nancy Wigginton, better known as Nan Winton, became the first woman to read the news on BBC national television in 1960, facing an uphill battle with entrenched prejudice against female presenters. This month, she died at the age of 93.

“At the time, women were often thought to be too frivolous to be the bearers of grave news, and she was hired to read the bulletins as an experiment,” read her New York Times obituary, which ran this week. “Three months later, BBC managers decided to remove her.”

Wigginton rarely gave interviews, but in 1964, in conversation with The Daily Mail, she adapted a line from Shakespeare, saying: “There were times when I was doing the announcing when I wanted to shout aloud like Shylock, ‘Hath not woman eyes, ears, senses?’”

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