Harriet Tubman, Abolitionist Hero, To Replace Andrew Jackson On $20 Bill

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is expected to announce today that Harriet Tubman, a 19th century abolitionist who escaped slavery and helped others to do the same via the ‘Underground Railroad,’ will replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. The effort to change the $20 bill started with a vote by Women On 20s, a group campaigning to put a female on the $20 bill, to boot Jackson from his note in 2015. Additional candidates included Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee nation, but Tubman was the winner.

Changes to other bills will be made as well. The $10 spot will feature suffragettes on the back, but Alexander Hamilton will remain on the front, eliminating previous speculation suggesting otherwise. Many observers say that Hamilton staying on the front of the $10 bill due to the critically acclaimed musical Hamilton.

“It will take a microscope to see who those individuals are, and we’ll be left with another decade or more of woefully inadequate representation of women and their worth,” Women on 20s wrote in an open letter to Lew, referring to the $10 bill, published by Time magazine.

The $5 bill will also be changed – it will have civil rights leaders on the back, along with a mural of prominent activities that took place near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Women on 20s wants the changes – especially replacing Jackson with Tubman – to be implemented by 2020, which will mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, but they could take ten years longer than that.