Biden administration pushes for Harriet Tubman to be on $20 bills
The Biden administration is resuming efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill.
Posted: Jan 26, 2021 5:53 PM
Posted By: Mary Peters
ROCHESTER, Minn. - The Biden administration is resuming efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill.
Press secretary Jen Psaki says U.S. money should reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that .
In April 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Tubman would be on the $20 bill in 2020, but the Trump administration stopped the redesign.
Who was Harriet Tubman?
Tubman was born Araminta Minty Ross in the early 1820s in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was enslaved at a young age and began working the field harvesting flax at age 13.
She escaped when she was around 27 years old, and she returned to Maryland about 13 times to rescue as many as 70 enslaved people through the Underground Railroad, a network of escape routes and safe houses organized by Black and white abolitionists. Abolitionists were those who sought to abolish the institution of slavery, through petitions, boycotts, speeches, literature and some advocated violent means.
Tubman claimed she never lost a passenger.
A group of eight women from the Washington, D.C., area is retracing Harriet Tubman’s trek for freedom, walking 116 miles from Maryland to Pennsylvania. They say the journey holds special meaning now as many Americans stand divided. The hikers set out on the Tubman Byway on Saturday, starting in Cambridge, Maryland, and making their way north to Kennett Square,. President Nov 20, 2019
A Hollywood executive wanted Julia Roberts to portray Harriet Tubman in the leading abolitionist’s biopic, the screenwriter of the new film “Harriet” said. After studying Tubman’s life in college, where she helped lead enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad, screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard was determined to adapt Tubman’s story into a feature film, he told Focus Features, the.
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President Biden‘s Treasury Department is currently in the process of adding American abolitionist and activist, Harriet Tubman‘s portrait to the $20 USD bill.
Following Trump’s administrative choice to let the Obama-era initiative lapse, the current White House press secretary, Jen Psaki has announced that Biden’s Treasury is looking to speed up the process, too. Psaki said, “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 money reflect the history and diversity of our country.”
The decision to replace Andrew Jackson with Ms. Tubman was spearheaded by the then-Treasury secretary, Jacob Lew in 2016. However, due to Trump’s opposition, the currency redesign no longer became a priority. Under Lew, the design was initially supposed to unveil in 2020 on the centennial of the 19th Amendment, a milestone for women’s right to vote.