Harriet Tubman would be the perfect replacement for Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, according to a contest held by a group called Women on 20s.
Concurrent with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) introduction of the Women on the Twenty Act in April, which would call for a “panel of citizens” to advise Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on finding a replacement design, the group gathered votes—600,000 of them. Tubman, a former slave, abolitionist, Union spy and conductor on the Underground Railroad, was the most popular choice, according to the Washington Post. She beat out fellow finalists Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Wilma Mankiller.
“Our paper bills are like pocket monuments to great figures in our history,” Women On 20s Executive Director Susan Ades Stone said in an e-mailed statement. “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.”
The last paper money portrait update was back in the 1920’s, so these ladies might have their work cut out for them. On the flip side, the $20 bill was the last bit of currency to be changed—Grover Cleveland proceeded Andrew Jackson—so maybe it’s about time.
Image via Biography.com.
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