Alexander Hamilton will remain on the front of the $10 bill, after a lengthy public debate about whether and how to replace his image with that of a woman. Instead, leaders of the women’s suffrage movement will be depicted on the back.
Abolitionist Harriet Tubman, meanwhile, will be portrayed on the front of the $20 bill, the Treasury announced Wednesday, replacing Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president. Jackson will be pictured on the back, along with the White House.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cited the input he had received from children as a motivation for choosing Tubman, writing in an open letter that she is “not just a historical figure, but a role model for leadership and participation in our democracy.”
The Treasury is moving ahead with an illustration of the women’s suffrage movement on the $10 bill because that note is first in line to be redesigned. Lew said that “we couldn’t wait” to add women to the paper currency. The design will show Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul in a march ending at the Treasury Department in downtown Washington.
The $5 bill will also be revamped to depict Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, and Marian Anderson.
The outcome is a victory for fans of Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary. Hamilton has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent months after the Treasury announced its plans to redesign the $10 bill and the Broadway play “Hamilton” became a major success.
From the moment he announced his intention to put a woman on U.S. currency last summer, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that Hamilton’s likeness would remain on the $10 note in some capacity. But those reassurances failed to mollify admirers of Hamilton and at the same time worried advocates of putting women on U.S. currency, who were concerned that the woman who was chosen would not be given prominence on the bill.
Before opening the process to public comment, Lew’s intention was to put Susan B. Anthony on the $10, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.
Tubman, however, was also a popular pick, as revealed by surveys.
Nevertheless, the $10, not the $20, is next in line for redesign, meaning that there will be a longer wait for bills featuring one woman. The Treasury had slated the new $10 to enter circulation in 2020.
Lew declined to estimate when the new bills might enter circulation, but explained that the Treasury and Bureau of Engraving are working with the Federal Reserve to expedite the process.
The goal, he said, is to introduce the new currency as “quickly as possible,” but the process is “very deliberate and technical.” Security and preventing counterfeiting remain the top priority, he said.
