Coverage: Harriet Tubman to appear on $20 bill, replacing Andrew Jackson

The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that Harriet Tubman, a former slave and abolitionist, will replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

The decision will make Tubman the first women in more than a century and the first African-American to appear on the front of a paper note.

Samantha Masunga of the Los Angeles Times had the day’s news:

Harriet Tubman and President Andrew Jackson lived on opposite sides of the American experience.

Tubman, a black woman, escaped slavery to become a conductor on the Underground Railroad, risking her life to lead slaves to freedom. Jackson, the son of Scots-Irish immigrants and owner of slaves, was elected president as a war hero and became known for policies that led to the deaths of countless Native Americans.

Soon, though, the two will share prominent placement on a new $20 bill — with Tubman, the former slave, getting top billing.

On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said Tubman would replace Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, becoming the first woman in more than a century and first African American to grace the front of a paper note. Jackson will be featured on the back of the bill alongside an image of the White House.

Jackie Calmes of The New York Times explained more about the currency’s redesign, which will officially happen in 2020:

Tubman, an African-American and a Union spy during the Civil War, would bump Jackson — a white man known as much for his persecution of Native Americans as for his war heroics and advocacy for the common man — to the back of the $20, in some reduced image along with the White House. Tubman would be the first woman so honored on paper currency since Martha Washington’s portrait briefly graced the $1 silver certificate in the late 19th century.

While Hamilton would remain on the $10, and Abraham Lincoln on the $5, images of women would be added to the back of both — in keeping with Mr. Lew’s intent “to bring to life” the national monuments depicted there.

The picture of the Treasury building on the back of the $10 bill would be replaced with a depiction of a 1913 march in support of women’s right to vote that ended at the building, along with portraits of five suffrage leaders: Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony, who in more recent years was on an unpopular $1 coin until minting ceased.

On the flip side of the $5 bill, the Lincoln Memorial would remain, but as the backdrop for the 1939 performance there of Marian Anderson, the African-American classical singer, after she was barred from singing at the segregated Constitution Hall nearby. Sharing space on the rear would be images of Eleanor Roosevelt, who arranged Anderson’s Lincoln Memorial performance, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1963 delivered his “I have a dream” speech from its steps.

The final redesigns will be unveiled in 2020, the centennial of the 19th Amendment establishing women’s suffrage, and will not go into wide circulation until later in the decade, starting with the new $10 note. The unexpectedly ambitious proposals reflect Mr. Lew’s tortuous attempt to expedite the process and win over critics who have lodged conflicting demands, pitting mainly women’s advocates against Hamiltonians newly empowered by the unlikely success of their hero’s story on Broadway.

Mr. Lew’s design proposals are the culmination of 10 months of often-heated public commentary that began almost immediately after he invited Americans last June to help him decide which woman from history to honor on the $10 bill. That feel-good initiative proved to be hardly as simple as he first imagined.

Ana Swanson and Abby Ohlheiser of The Washington Post explained how the popularity of the musical “Hamilton” helped keep Alexander Hamilton’s face on the $10:

Almost everyone celebrated Lew’s decision to feature a woman. But, for some economists and historians, there was a vociferous reaction against the choice — never clearly stated but widely assumed — to relocate Hamilton from the front of the $10 bill. They noted ruefully that Hamilton was the mastermind behind America’s financial system, while Jackson, the seventh president, was a fervent opponent of a nationally integrated economic system whose tenure included a violent campaign against Native Americans.

Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrote in June that he was “appalled” at the idea of removing Hamilton from his position on the $10 and that honoring a woman on a paper bill was “a fine idea, but it shouldn’t come at Hamilton’s expense.”

Hamilton received added support after the breakout hit of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “Hamilton,” a hip-hop biography of the first Treasury secretary that is one of Broadway’s biggest sensations in years. Miranda, who first got notice for his unusual take after a White House appearance seven years ago, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama this week for “Hamilton.”

After a visit to Washington last month, Miranda himself assured his anxious fans that Lew told him he would be “very happy” with the new $10. “#wegetthejobdone,” Miranda tweeted.

But as the Treasury gave hints it would acquiesce to pressure to retain Hamilton’s prominence, some women’s groups were alarmed that he might delay his promise to move forward in featuring a woman. On Wednesday, there was mixed reaction to the Treasury announcement.