The twenty-dollar bill is getting a revamp with a stamp of #BlackGirlMagic as plans are in motion by the Biden led administration for famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman to grace the bill.
Recall Tubman was due to début in 2020, but the Treasury Department announced that the redesign would be delayed until 2026.
Harriet Tubman, abolitionist, nurse, scout, and spy for the northern states during the Civil War will replace Andrew Jackson, on the $20 bill, according to the White House press secretary Jen Psaki who made this known to reporters during her Monday news briefing. A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed the change.
Upon effect, Tubman will become the first Black person on the face of American paper currency and the first woman in generations; Martha Washington appeared on a $1 bill in the 1890s, and Pocahontas was in a group picture on the $20 bill in the 1860s, according to Reuters.
“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes,” Psaki said. “It’s important that our notes … reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that. So we’re exploring ways to speed up that effort.”
Derrick Johnson, chief executive and president of the NAACP, said in a statement: “Harriet Tubman lived at a time when Congress, the Supreme Court and our nation was abhorrently paralyzed over whether it was legal to allow one person to own another. In a true act of liberty and independence, Tubman freed herself from slavery, only to return south 19 more times, risking her own life and freedom, to save her family and hundreds of others from a life spent in slavery.
“The legacy of Harriet Tubman and other Black Americans who built the nation we know today must be recognized and celebrated in our schools, culture and currency. The NAACP applauds the Biden administration’s announcement to change the design of the $20 bill to commemorate the full story of the significant figures in our history.”
In 2016, the Obama administration had announced plans to put Tubman on the bill after she emerged victorious among several women in an informal nationwide poll. However, plans were scuttled by Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in 2019.
Trump was a known fan of Jackson, an enslaver whom historians
“Andrew Jackson had a great history,” Trump said in 2019, “and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill.”
Describing the decision to include Tubman on the note as “pure political correctness” he suggested she instead appear on the largely ceremonial $2 bill.
