Abolitionist Harriet Tubman, best known for her efforts to free slaves through the "Underground Railroad," is the choice of a campaign to replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
The campaign Women on 20s has been advocating to place the image of a woman on the bill. The campaign said it narrowed the finalists to Tubman, former first lady and human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt, civil rights figure Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation,
according to the Washington Post.
"Our paper bills are like pocket monuments to great figures in our history," said Susan Ades Stone, executive director of Women on 20s. "Our work won't be done until we're holding a Harriet $20 bill in our hands in time for the centennial of women's suffrage in 2020."
The Post noted that Jackson's portrait was itself a replacement, becoming the face of the $20 in the 1920s instead of President Grover Cleveland. The U.S. Treasury will make the final call on if the Tubman switch will happen, though the Women on 20s campaign is petitioning the White House.
While President Barack Obama has not officially weighed in on replacing Jackson with Tubman, or another woman, last year he referenced a letter from a Massachusetts girl who wrote him a letter about it,
according to BuzzFeed.com.
"Last week, a young girl wrote to ask me why aren't there any women on our currency, and then she gave me like a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff – which I thought was a pretty good idea," Obama said during a question-and-answer session at an appearance.
The Post said U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen introduced a bill in April that would request that the Treasury Department to pull together a panel to talk about putting a woman's face on money.
"That's the way it was done back in the 1920s," Shaheen told the Post, referring to the time when Jackson replaced Cleveland.
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