Biden Administration making quick moves to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill

The Biden administration recently announced that it was committed to speeding up the process of putting slave abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s image on the 20-dollar bill.

The new press secretary of the White House, Jen Psaki said it was of utmost importance that the dollar “reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that.” Adding that, the Biden administration is doing its best to speed up the process.

“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes,” Psaki told reporters.

Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) also announced that she would be reintroducing in Congress the Woman on Twenty Act of 2021. The Act will require any $20 bill printed after 2024 to “prominently feature” the image of Tubman.

“For several years, I worked directly with the Department of Treasury to pan the release of the new $20 design featuring Harriet Tubman to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment,” said Beatty in a statement. “The American people want our currency to better reflect the diversity of our great country. I look forward to working with the Biden-Harris administration, including the first-ever female secretary of the treasury, Janet Yellen, to put a woman on the twenty and make the Tubman twenty a reality.”

The $20 bill redesign was first announced in April 2016. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Tubman’s image would be on the redesigned dollar bill, which was slated to be unveiled in 2020. The reverse side of the dollar note will have the image of President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder.

The $20 bill redesign was an initiative of the Obama era. Little progress was made in 2016, up until 2019 when the Trump administration put a hold to it. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, on May 19, 2019, said the dollar note redesign will not take effect until 2028, at the end of the assumed Trump administration.

“The ultimate decision on a redesign will most likely be another secretary later down the road,” Mnuchin said before the House Financial Service Committee in 2019.

Donald Trump, a fan of Andrew Jackson, before his election into office criticized the currency redesign, calling it a “pure act of political correctness.” He rather suggested that the Tubman portrait be put on the $2 bill.

Harriet Tubman was a renowned slave trade abolitionist who put her life on the line to lead more than 300 slaves to freedom. Her story has lasted for all US generations and formed one of the core layers of US history.  

In a 2016 interview with NPR, Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture said the move to redesign the $20 bill was strategic to national history.

“For me, having Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill really says, first of all, that America realizes that it’s not the same country that it once was – that it’s a place where diversity matters,” Bunch said. “And it allows us to make a hero out of someone like Harriet Tubman, who deserves to be a hero.”