This article was updated April 20th, 2016 at 4:30pm EST to reflect the formal announcement on US currency changes from US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Check out Lew's open letter here.
Harriet Tubman will officially replace Andrew Jackson on the US twenty dollar bill!!
In addition, images of Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul -- five heroic women of the suffrage movement will appear on the back of the ten dollar bill.
AND the back of the new US five dollar bill will feature Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Anderson, and Eleanor Roosevelt to commemorate historic events in the civil rights movement that took place at the Lincoln Memorial. President Lincoln will stay on the front of the bill.
The front of the new $20 will bear the portrait of Harriet Tubman, whose life was dedicated to fighting for liberty. pic.twitter.com/8lAEkoD78p
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) April 20, 2016
Last year, petitions to replace Alexander Hamilton on $10 dollar bill with a woman were submitted to the White House. Harriet Tubman won a vote within the petition as the public's preferred first woman to go on US paper currency. More than 60,000 people signed and voted in the petition.
Over the last year, public support for the measure shifted from the $10 dollar bill to switching out President Andrew Jackson on the $20. This is attributed in part to the popularity of mega-hit musical Hamilton. Many also consider Andrew Jackson to be a historically more controversial figure because of his involvement in moving Native Americans off of their land.
“Our paper bills are like pocket monuments to great figures in our history,” Executive Director Susan Ades Stone of Women On 20s, an advocacy group pushing for gender equality in US currency, told TIME magazine last year. “Our work won’t be done until we’re holding a Harriet $20 bill in our hands in time for the centennial of women’s suffrage in 2020.”
Well, Susan your work is about to be done.
The formal announcement came from US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
Introducing the new $20, $10, & $5! Visit https://t.co/WJ3hxN2U2g to learn more 💵 pic.twitter.com/DsUW1vLACR
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) April 20, 2016
Here's just a small sampling of why Harriet Tubman is totally deserving to be on US paper currency.
● She escaped slavery in the US herself.
● She was a leader in the Underground Railroad which helped over 100,000 African Americans escape slavery through a transnational system of secret routes and passageways to guide enslaved Africans and people of African descent to safety during the 19th century.
● She made thirteen trips via the Underground Railroad herself to help others, personally rescuing an estimated 70 people between 1849 and 1865.
Every time I'll go pull out the $20 bill and I see Harriet Tubman's face judging me, I'll think twice about my purchase. This is good.
— Awesomely Luvvie (@Luvvie) April 20, 2016
And now she’s going to be on the US $20 dollar bill! (Though we may not see the new bill in circulation until 2030.)
THIS is a monumental moment and step forward for gender and racial equality in US history.
Harriet Tubman is expected to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, the only woman featured since the late 1800s pic.twitter.com/wbHlEZ1ZoQ
— Mic (@micnews) April 20, 2016
Share your thoughts on Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson in the comments below.