Check that $20 bill in your pocket. Who's on the front of it? It may not be President Andrew Jackson for long if the group Women on $20s gets their way.
The nonprofit says it’s time for our bills to carry the face of a woman and they are committed to making that happen, even compiling a possible list of 15 women who should replace Old Hickory.
Why the $20 bill and not the $50, $10 or $100 bill? The year 2020 will mark 100 years since women were given the right to vote through the Nineteenth Amendment. As part of the campaign, these activists hope to collect more than 100,000 signatures to send to the White House petitioning for Treasury to make the change. They’ve asked visitors to their website to vote for the woman they think has made the greatest contribution to society and done so facing significant challenges. Those surveys will double as the White House petition.
Some of the names make sense: Red Cross founder Clara Barton, civil rights leader Rosa Parks, and abolitionist Harriett Tubman. However, there are also candidates such as Feminist Mystique author Betty Frieda who have purported to move the interests of women forward but instead been purveyors of the bitter, victim-driven strain of feminism that so many young women run from today.
The Washington Post reports:
Campaign organizers are targeting the 20 because 2020 will mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
But there's another reason: Jackson's authorization and enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 — which forced several Native American tribes to give up their land to white farmers and move to Oklahoma — makes his continued presence on American currency controversial. Slate pitched the idea of doing away with the seventh U.S. president's face on the $20 bill last year, writing: "Andrew Jackson engineered a genocide. He shouldn’t be on our currency."
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Here are the 15 choices of Women on $20s, which Stone hopes will, as a group, "tell a great American story of women not only helping other women but helping to improve the lives of all Americans despite facing enormous obstacles along the way:"
Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross
Margaret Sanger, who opened the first birth control clinic in the US.
Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who wrote the hugely influential environmental book Silent Spring
Rosa Parks, the iconic civil rights activist
Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist activist famed for her journeys on the underground railroad
Barbara Jordan, a politician who was the first black woman in the south to be elected to the House of Representatives
Betty Friedan, feminist author of the Feminine Mystique
Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under FDR, who was the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet
Susan B. Anthony, women's suffrage movement leader
Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, early women's rights activist and abolitionist
Eleanor Roosevelt, human rights activist and former first Lady
Sojourner Truth, African American women's rights activist and abolitionist
Patsy Mink, the first woman of color elected to the House, and the first Asian American elected to Congress
Alice Paul, women's suffrage movement leader
Most of the faces on our folding money belong to presidents, though Benjamin Franklin (the $100 bill) Alexander Hamilton ($10 bill), who served as secretary of the treasure, have also made the grade. Salmon P. Chase, another secretary of the treasury, was on the $10,000 bill, but it is no longer printed. The decision as to whose face is on the currency belongs mostly to the Secretary of the Treasury.
Martha Washington is the only woman who has ever made it onto folding money (she was briefly on a silver certificate), but Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, who helped Lewis and Clark, and Helen Keller have also made it onto coins. So it would be a good thing to commemorate more worthy women in this way.
Many of the women listed as candidates for the $20 bill have achieved admirable feats for our nation. How many slaves found freedom because of the Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman?
But some of these women fall short of national greatness and others such as Margaret Sanger and Rachel Carson, whose anti-DDT crusade may actually have cost lives in the developing world, reflect an ideology that many Americans would not like to see commemorated on our currency. Those who believe that the federal government’s funding of Planned Parenthood is unjustified might not like to see Planned Parenthood's foremother Ms. Sanger starring at them from a twenty dollar bill.
By all means, the faces of great women should be on our currency—but let’s hope the decision isn’t governed by ideology or politics.