TheTreasury Departmenthas officially announced thatFounding Father (and Broadway star) Alexander Hamilton will stay on the $10 bill and Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
On Twitter, the Department confirmed that Hamilton will on the front of the $10 bill, with five women associated with suffrage on the back: Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Lucretia Mott. On the $20 bill, Tubman is on the front, with images of Jackson and the White House on the inverse.
Images of people associated with the Lincoln Memorial, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson, will be added to the inverse of the $5 bill.
News of Lew’s decision leaked out over the weekend about Hamilton, and Tubman’s selection was reported by major media outlets on Wednesday morning.
Since the initial reports on the weekend, there has been an going debate about the decision to not put a woman on the $10 bill’s front was in fact a “step back” for women – since the Treasury Department will feature a mural of famous suffragette’s on the bill’s back.
co*kie Roberts, the TV commentator, wrote in the New York Times on Wednesday that the move with the $10 bill was “another ‘wait your turn’ moment for American women” and she would put Hamilton’s wife’s picture on the $10 bill.
Tubman, the famed abolitionist, had been one rumored candidate for the $20 bill spot, along with Rosa Parks.
Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, has appeared on the $20 bill since 1928, when replaced Grover Cleveland on the widely circulated currency. During the same year, Hamilton was moved from the $1,000 bill to the $10 bill, where he replaced … Andrew Jackson.
Other past occupants of $20 currency notes include explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Robert Morris and Benjamin Franklin. The $20 bill alumni include Cleveland in the Federal Reserve era, and George Washington, James Garfield, Pocahontas and Alexander Hamilton in the pre-Fed era.
Last June, Lew announced a five-year process to find the right woman, or women, to go on the new version of the $10 bill, replacing Hamilton, the father of the Treasury Department and one of the seminal Founding Fathers.
Lew soon walked back the idea that Hamilton was disappearing from the currency scene. Lewtold The Wall Street Journalthat Hamilton would play some role as an icon on Americans currency, but he wasn’t specific. “We made it clear that Alexander Hamilton will remain part of our currency,” Lew said. “He played such a formative role in establishing our economic system. We are proud to continue to plan on honoring Alexander Hamilton.”
Ironically, Jackson was deeply opposed to paper currency. And no one really knows why the Treasury Department put Jackson on the $20 bill in 1928.
One person who lobbied Lew to keep Hamilton on the $10 bill was Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star of Broadway’s hit musical, “Hamilton.” Miranda has met with Lew twice, once backstage on Broadway and second time in Washington when the play’s stars sung at the White House in March.
