A Welcome and Overdue Change to the $20 Bill

Photo
Credit National Geographic Channel

The Treasury Department’s new plan to place a portrait of Harriet Tubman on the new $20 bill and keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill is the right call. Now it needs to make sure the change happens as quickly as feasible. The country has waited long enough to have a woman on the currency.

Treasury’s initial plan to have Hamilton and a woman share the $10 bill never made much sense given the important role that Hamilton played in the creation of the American financial system as the first Treasury secretary. It was always a much better idea to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill. He was a slave owner and played a huge part in the destruction of American Indian tribes of the Southeast. Jackson also hated paper currency and vetoed the reauthorization of the Second Bank of the United States, a predecessor to the Federal Reserve.

The choice of Tubman for the $20 bill makes a lot of sense, by contrast. Tubman’s list of achievements is long and distinguished. She escaped slavery and helped scores of others to flee to freedom on the Underground Railroad. She worked as a scout and spy for the Union during the Civil War, gathering intelligence that proved incredibly useful. And she was a suffragist who helped fight for women’s right to vote after the Civil War.

In addition to the decision to place Tubman on the $20 bill, the Treasury secretary, Jacob Lew, also announced that the back of the $10 bill would feature images of five suffragists – Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony – and the back of a new $5 bill will have an image of Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt. Designs for the three bills will be unveiled in 2020 and the first to go into circulation will be the new $10, followed by the $20 and the $5.

It is too bad that it will take years before these bills go into circulation, but Mr. Lew says designing anti-counterfeiting measures takes time. Also, for the first time the Treasury will add tactile features to the notes for blind and visually impaired people. Mr. Lew, his successor and the Federal Reserve, which orders currency notes from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, should do everything they can to speed up the introduction of these bills.

Of course, some people like Donald Trump are already complaining that the removal of Jackson from the $20 bill is an act of “political correctness.” This should hardly be surprising, since Mr. Trump and his ilk are quick to take offense at any step that undermines their limited understanding of history. Mr. Jackson has been on the $20 bill since 1928 and it is not clear exactly why he was put there in the first place. That seems like quite a lot of time to have one highly controversial and destructive personality on American currency. And Mr. Lew says that Jackson will remain on the back of the $20 bill in some form, so he won’t exactly be gone and forgotten.