Politico | Biden administration ramping up efforts to put Harriet Tubman on US$20 bill
- The Trump administration had pushed off the effort, which would remove former president and slave owner Andrew Jackson from the front of the note
- White House spokeswoman says America’s currency should ‘reflect the history and diversity of our country’
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Nick Niedzwiadek on politico.com on January 25, 2021.
US President Joe Biden is looking to resume work to redesign the US$20 bill to feature abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
“The Treasury department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new US$20 notes,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday.
She added that America's currency should “reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman's image gracing the new US$20 note would certainly reflect that”.
The effort, initiated late in former president Barack Obama’s second term, was backburnered by the Trump administration under ex-Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Mnuchin has said that the delay was due to additional work needed on anti-counterfeiting security features, and that bills with her image on it were not likely to enter circulation before 2028.
The redesigned note, on which Tubman would usurp President Andrew Jackson – a slave owner who would be relegated to the backside of the note – was supposed to roll out in 2020. The timing of the design’s unveiling was initially supposed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which extended voting rights to women.
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Jackson, the seventh president, proved to be one of former president Donald Trump’s favourite historical figures. Trump spoke of Jackson often on the 2016 campaign trail, deriding plans replacing him with Tubman as “pure political correctness” and suggested placing Tubman on the US$2 bill instead.
The Treasury department has previously denied that the delay was influenced by political considerations. In 2019 the department’s inspector general agreed to open an investigation into the decision to push back the redesign for several years.
Over the summer Trump did propose including Tubman as part of a “national garden of American heroes” – though the future of that project is uncertain now that he is out of office.
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