The Photographic Life
of Harriet Tubman
2015
Under President Obama, the Treasury Department announces that a woman will replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.
This was not received warmly thanks to the award-winning Broadway musical Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
People thought why not remove Andrew Jackson from the $20.The 7th president of the United States owned slaves and contributed in the forcible deportation and killing of Indigenous people from their land with the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears.
A campaign from a group called "Women on 20s" selected 15 female figures that they thought were worthy of being on the $20 bill. Over 600,000 people voted. Harriet Tubman received the most votes.
2016
On Wednesday April 20, 2016, Jacob Lew, then former Treasury Secretary, announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20 bill. The $5 and $10 bills would feature other women and civil rights leaders.
The bills were due to come out in 2020, the hundredth anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted women* the right to vote.
*Not all women were granted the right to vote with the 19th amendment. It mostly applied to white women. Native Americans weren't allowed to vote until 1924 with the Snyder Act, but even then it was up to states to enforce this. New Mexico was the last state to enfranchise Native Americans in 1962. Chinese immigrants weren't given the right to vote until 1943 with the Magnuson Act. The Voting Rights Act wasn't passed until 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Though the 19th amendment passed in 1920, a woman like Harriet Tubman probably wouldn't have been able to vote until at least 1965, especially with lack of education.
The reception of this announcement was mixed, but it was something that people thought was going to happen for a fact. That is until Donald Trump became president.
Dano Wall, a New York artist, created a stamp that people could use to stamp out the face of Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman after the Trump administration began.
The stamp has garnered a lot of attention recently with the announced delay by Steve Mnuchin. Many people have began stamping their money and putting it in circulation. Some churches have even started sifting through their collection baskets and stamping their $20 bills with the Tubman Stamp.
For more information and a blueprint for the stamp, here is the artist's website: https://tubmanstamp.com/