Shortly after President Joe Biden was sworn into office, the Biden administration announced that they planned to resume the process of adding an image of African American humanitarian and abolitionist Harriet Tubman to the twenty dollar bill, and were currently inquiring about its course.
The Obama administration first initiated this objective back in 2016, when President Barack Obama announced that they intended for Tubman to appear on the bill by the year 2020. However, when Donald Trump was elected president, he and his affiliates noticeably belated those plans as he pursued other issues concerning the nation.
“I never knew that the Obama administration had started this undertaking, and it sucks that Trump delayed it,” senior Charles Hunter said. “But it’s good to know that Biden is speeding up the process.”
Born into slavery, Tubman grew up in Maryland where she endured oppressive conditions and treatment throughout her early life. After absconding to Philadelphia, she became a conductor for the Underground Railroad, an elaborate network of covert routes and safe houses which provided financial, spiritual, and material aid for traveling enslaved individuals. Risking her life, Tubman stealthily journeyed back to the southern states a total of thirteen times and secretly led approximately seventy enslaved African Americans, including her own friends and family, north where they eventually gained freedom. She proceeded to serve as a cook and nurse, as well as spy and armed scout for the Union Army during the American Civil War, and later dedicated the remainder of her life to advocating for women’s liberation during the women’s rights movement.
“I think that it’s about time they did something to recognize the Black Americans that helped build our nation,” Hunter said.
It is not yet evident whether the seventh president of the United States Andrew Jackson will be replaced by Tubman on the bill altogether, or if she will solely join him on the currency.
Nonetheless, if the Biden administration advances with the full extent of alteration plans designed by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew back in the year 2016, it is likely that various historical icons may be added to other notes of currency. Potentially, suffragists such as Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and Susan B. Anthony may reserve the back of the ten dollar bill, and civil rights activists including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Marian Anderson may be appended to the back of the five dollar bill.
These implicit changes would cease the ongoing exclusion of women from being depicted on
American banknotes, and would feature Black distinguished figures on federal banknotes for the first time, thereby significantly augmenting the degree of representation.
“It’s a very great thing what the Biden administration is doing,” junior Xavier Williams said. “They are shedding light to African Americans, which is something we need during these times.”
