The Biden administration is looking to revamp the effort to place Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, replacing former president Andrew Jackson.
“I was here when we announced that, and it was very exciting and hasn’t moved forward yet,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who also served in the Obama administration, told reporters during a briefing on Monday afternoon. “The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes. It’s important that our notes, our money… reflect the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note will certainly reflect that.”
Psaki added that the administration is trying to find ways to “speed up that effort.”
Twenty-dollar bill going from Andrew Jackson to Harriet Tubman — one symbol of difference between Trump and Biden. Proposed new design below: pic.twitter.com/e6xaukiSJJ
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 25, 2021
The Obama administration had first proposed putting the iconic abolitionist on the paper currency in 2016. The goal was for the replacement of Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, to take place in 2020.
Tubman would be the first black woman and the first African American to appear on U.S. paper currency. Born around 1820, Tubman escaped slavery and later became a “conductor” for the Underground Railroad, where she led enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War.
Obama-era Treasury Secretary Jack Lew first announced the change in 2016 after a viral online campaign to feature a woman on the currency.
In 2020, Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the new $20 bill would not be released until 2030, and the next administration’s secretary would make the decision on the change.—
Source: Yahoo News
