The year 2021 has already called for new changes and one of those should be the face on the $20 bill you regularly use to buy a couple of pizza.
You might think this is unimportant, but money is one of many symbols representing our nation. The faces on our currency matter.
Do you want to see the face of a racist and arguably genocidal man who murdered Native Americans on their own land and enslaved Black Americans or a woman who did everything in her power to free them?
White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced on Jan. 25 the Biden administration will resume the process of replacing Andrew Jackson with abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, according to a Jan. 26 ABC News article.
She will become the first Black woman to have her face on U.S. currency.
The plan was first announced in 2016 during the Obama administration when the renewed currency was scheduled for release in 2020.
If you’re asking yourself why this change took so long, it’s because former President Donald Trump delayed the process in 2019.
He believed the $20 bill’s change was solely out of “political correctness.”
To Trump, Jackson represents historical success and he believed taking Jackson off the bill would be too harsh, according to an April 21, 2016 town hall on NBC’s Today show.
Trump has expressed a huge fondness for Jackson and hung a portrait of him in the Oval Office.
But replacing Jackson with Tubman is long overdue because she represents a step forward necessary for these turbulent times in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) and the post-Trump administration.
Tubman escaped slavery and helped hundreds of others escape the institution through the Underground Railroad, according to her PBS biography.
She risked her life every day and returned to the South many times to help runaway slaves escape the plantation system.
This led Tubman to receive the nickname “Moses” for leadership similar to the biblical reference of the
same name.
She helped the Union Army as a spy during the Civil War and provided information on transportation routes.
Tubman was involved in the women’s suffrage movement in her later years, according to an April 21, 2016 National Geographic article.
If having a person of color such as Tubman on our national currency doesn’t show what our country should value, then I don’t know what will.
Jackson was in favor of slavery. While he was president, he signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, uprooting Native Americans from their southeastern homelands into designated “Indian Territory” across the Mississippi River, according to History.com.
Native Americans were forced to walk thousands of miles to unfamiliar land, exposed to famine, disease and warfare along the way.
This walk is known as the Trail of Tears and marked suffering for the Cherokee people, according to Britannica.
To those who say changing the faces on bills is rewriting history, it’s not, because we are now choosing a true hero to exhibit.
Following 2020 and the BLM movement, there’s a collective realization for those who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of others.
Although it may seem like just a face on a bill, it’s about time we honor people including Tubman who made the U.S. better.
Honoring Tubman will show our nation’s diversity and empower Black women like Tubman who played a huge role in shaping our history.
Before you know it, you’ll be seeing Tubman’s face every time you buy some pizzas.
