Campaign Action
The grassroots movement to put women on our country’s currency really became a force a few years ago with the Women On 20s organizing effort. The group used the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s passage, granting women the right to vote, as a jumping-off point for its efforts to put a woman on our currency by 2020. The efforts of millions of women led to Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen proposing that very idea as a bill. The Treasury Department announced that it would put a woman on the $10 bill, as that was the next in line for a redesign. Because of blowback and because Americans felt Andrew Jackson—something of a genocidal maniac in his day—should be replaced instead of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father on the $10 bill, whose popularity had surged in the wake of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical about him, it was announced in April 2016 that famed American revolutionary and slave liberator Harriet Tubman would be put on the $20 bill. That was all before a bunch of racists took control of the White House and the Treasury Department.
In March, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was cagey when asked about the progress of the Harriet Tubman $20 bill, saying, "We haven't made any decisions as to whether we'll change the bill, or won't change the bill.” Considering that women of color have always been given the short end of the stick in our country, this wasn’t a shock so much as a disappointment. One could pretend to hold out hope that Tubman’s appearance on the bill would still happen by 2020, but understanding the nature of white supremacy in this country made that hope seem futile.
On Wednesday, under questioning from Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan in a House Financial Services Committee hearing, Mnuchin said that there were no plans to produce a Harriet Tubman $20 bill this coming year. He added, “The primary reason we have looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues.” In fact, there are no plans for a redesign even possibly happening until 2028. The $10 bill and the $50 bill will be redesigned first, according to Mnuchin.