The Face of Change: US Ready to Show Women the Money With $20 Tubman

The US Treasury Department is focused on gender and inclusion these days, so no surprise that when it comes to putting America’s money where the government’s mouth is, there will finally be a woman on the nation’s currency — a powerful statement of a nation’s values and brand as much as a flag and other symbols.

According to the New York Times and Politico, Harriet Tubman, the African-American heroine who helped guide thousands of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, will replace former president Andrew Jackson — who owned slaves — on the new $20 note, an amount for which she once staged a sit-in.

The ​​goal of refreshing the faces on the US currency: “to institutionalize our American history by depicting people, monuments, symbols and concepts that reflect the past and reinforce a theme for that particular era of currency design.”

US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew confirmed the new money today, beginning his essay on Medium with the statement: “I am excited to announce that for the first time in more than a century, the front of our currency will feature the portrait of a woman — Harriet Tubman on the $20 note.”