Sunday Poll: Who Should Be On Future $20 Bills?
The group Women on 20s is seeking to get the US Treasury to replace Andrew Jackson with a female by 2020 — the 100th anniversary of their right to vote:
The group’s original list of 100 names was winnowed down to 60 through informal discussion, then to 30 via a two-part survey and to 15 by a group of outsiders that included women’s history experts. The public was then able to choose their three favorites from the list of 15 candidates, which also included feminist Betty Friedan, birth control activist Margaret Sanger, women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony and conservationist Rachel Carson. (Washington Post)
The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote. So it seems fitting to commemorate that milestone by voting to elevate women to a place that is today reserved exclusively for the men who shaped American history. That place is on our paper money. And that new portrait can become a symbol of greater changes to come.
Let’s make the names of female “disrupters” — the ones who led the way and dared to think differently — as well-known as their male counterparts. In the process, maybe it will get a little easier to see the way to full political, social and economic equality for women. And hopefully it won’t take another century to realize the motto inscribed on our money: E pluribus unum, or “Out of many, one.” (WomenOn20s.org)
Their list is now down to four candidates:
- Wilma Mankiller — 1st female Native American Tribe chief
- Eleanor Roosevelt — former first lady
- Rosa Parks — civil rights activist
- Harriet Tubman — abolitionist, underground railroad
The poll today asks who should be on future $20 bills. I’ve included the current face, Andrew Jackson, for those who don’t want to see the $20 change. Please vote in the poll in the right sidebar but also vote for one of the four finalists at WomenOn20s.org.
— Steve Patterson
Harriet Tubman would be a good choice since her life and career was in the distant past. Picking someone of more recent vintage might imply that whoever is chosen would be replaced again, as her star fades as a political or cultural celebrity. I think a woman from deeper in our nation’s history would carry more gravitas and sense of stability.
Rosa Parks was a NAACP shill – the true hero of the Montgomery Bus boycott was Claudette Colvin
Andrew Jackson was indeed a terrible president who forced Native Americans out of their native land. He was responsible for the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears. In any case, I will be happy when he is off the US $20 bill.
I’ll also mention something some people may find controversial. Abraham Lincoln said: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.” American History looks kindly towards Lincoln although in reality, he was simply a product of his own time. Nothing more, nothing less. In 1863, the Lincoln administration oversaw one of the biggest land-grabs in history – turfing the Navajos and Mescalero Apaches out of their New Mexico territory and into a reservation called Bosque Redondo 725 kilometers (450 miles) away. The journey there was the very definition of a death march. Thousands of people were herded across the baking desert with little in the way of supplies, surrounded by an army who summarily executed stragglers. When the survivors made it to Bosque Redondo, they were shoved into squalid, disease-ridden camps and simply left to die. By the time the decision was reversed, one-third of those interred were dead of exposure or starvation.
In my opinion Lincoln shouldn’t be on the US $5, but that will most likely never change.