We're on the money!
by digby
I realize this may not mean a lot to many people but it's the sort of symbolism that can change the way kids grow up thinking about their history and their culture and society:
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will today announce that Harriet Tubman, the slave-turned-Civil War abolitionist, will feature on a new design of the $20 note, a department official told BuzzFeed News.
President Andrew Jackson, a controversial figure due to his harsh treatment of Native Americans, will move to the back of the bill.
Lew will also announce changes to the $5 and $10 bills, BuzzFeed News confirmed.
Calls from activists to include a woman on the nation’s currency prompted Lew to announced last June that the $10 bill would be redesigned to remove the nation’s first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, in order to include a woman.
Perhaps Hamilton needs to thank Broadway showman Lin-Manuel Miranda for elevating him to pop culture relevance through his Pultizer Prize-winning musical, but Lew is also expected to announce that Hamilton will remain on the $10 note, according to the New York Times.
When Miranda, who wrote and stars in Hamilton, met with Lew in Washington, D.C., in March he signaled his character would remain the $10 Founding Father.
Politico reported that although Hamilton will remain on the new $10 bill, it will also feature “leaders of the movement to give women the right to vote on the back.”
The $5 bill will also be redesigned to include civil rights icons, Politico reported.
I actually remember asking my mother back in the dark ages why there were no women on the money and she shrugged and said it was because men were the country's leaders. I don't think she meant that's the way it should be, but rather an acceptance that that's the way it was. And it was. She was born before women even had the right to vote.
Replacing the slave-owning Jackson with Harriet Tubman is a wonderful choice, and putting some other feminists and civil rights icons on the notes is meaningful too. Good for the Obama administration for taking this step. It will surely make the right wingers mad, but so what? Everything makes them mad.
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