Harriet Tubman to Replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 Bill

Jackie Calmes, reporting for the NYT:

The Treasury Department will announce on Wednesday afternoon that Harriet Tubman, an African-American who ferried hundreds of slaves to freedom, will replace the slaveholding Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 note, according to a Treasury official, while newly popular Alexander Hamilton will remain on the face of the $10 bill.

Other depictions of women and civil rights leaders will also be part of new currency designs.

The new designs, from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, would be made public in 2020 in time for the centennial of woman’s suffrage and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. None of the bills, including a new $5 note, would reach circulation until the next decade.

The Hamilton musical is so wildly popular that it changed the course of this decision — the original plan was to put Tubman on the $10 bill, not the $20. Whatever the reason, this is a much better outcome — Jackson was opposed to paper currency. Good riddance to a terrible “great President”.

★ Wednesday, 20 April 2016