Move over, Andrew Jackson. News has spread of abolitionist Harriet Tubman winning the nonprofit “Women on 20s” initiative, which advocates for a historically influential female as the new profile on the $20 U.S. currency bill. But just how likely is it that paper money will get a face lift in time for the centennial of women’s suffrage in 2020?
South Africa and Britain are among the countries that have updated the images on their bank notes in recent years, but the United States has very rarely made changes to the profiles on its paper currency since the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton introduced the dollar in 1785.
“What better way to modernize our currency than make it reflect who we are today, the diverse culture that we have become, and to use the platform of our paper currency to promote gender equality and greater recognition of women’s contributions?” says journalist Susan Ades Stone, who together with small-business owner Barbara Ortiz Howard has spent the last year working on a strategy to ask Americans which woman should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. The two women leading the initiative have sent a written petition to the White House asking President Barack Obama to direct Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew to fulfill their goal.
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