American currency features mostly white, male, dead Presidents. And www.womenon20s.org (W20) is out to change that. Their reasons for giving Andrew Jackson a pink slip:
"...as the seventh president of the United States, he ... helped gain Congressional passage of the 'Indian Removal Act of 1830' that drove Native American tribes of the Southeastern United States off their resource-rich land and into Oklahoma to make room for white European settlers. Commonly known as the Trail of Tears, the mass relocation of Indians resulted in the deaths of thousands from exposure, disease and starvation during the westward migration. Not okay.
(and) ...Some argue that because Jackson was a fierce opponent of the central banking system and favored gold and silver coin or 'hard money' over paper currency, he is an ironic choice for immortalization on our money."
tennessean.com notes that, in April, "U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez and U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduced bills that would direct the U.S. Treasury Department to select a famous American woman to replace Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill. 'If this is a country that truly believes in equality, it is time to put our money where our mouths are, literally, and express that sense of justice and fairness on the most widely used bill in circulation,' said Gutierrez."
On April 14th, "Equal Pay Day," U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) introduced S. 925 the Women on the Twenty Act, legislation that would direct the Secretary of the Treasury to convene a panel of citizens to recommend a woman whose likeness would be featured on a new twenty dollar bill. The legislation complements a grassroots campaign, Women on 20s (W20), which has garnered hundreds of thousands of online votes in support of the change. The Daily News dubbed the legislation the "Twenty Dollar Bill."
April 14th is "Equal Pay Day" because it is the date to which the average woman must work into the new year in order to earn what her male counterpart earned in the preceding calendar year. Yep, that guy could just take the first quarter of the year off of work and still take home the same annual pay as she does. And I'm betting that he's not cooking dinner and vacuuming while he's home, either.
In a press release, Shaheen said, "Our paper currency is an important part of our everyday lives and reflects our values, traditions and history as Americans...It's long overdue for that reflection to include the contributions of women. The incredible grassroots support for this idea shows that there's strong support for a woman to be the new face of the twenty dollar bill."
Her press release continues, "Although our paper currency has been redesigned several times to improve legibility and prevent counterfeiting, the portraits on the seven main bill denominations have not changed in nearly a century. Those portraits were chosen by a special Treasury-appointed panel of citizens in the late 1920s. The Shaheen legislation would allow for a new citizen panel to be appointed that would take into consideration the input of the American public to select a woman to honor in this way."
www.womenon20s.org says "...it seems fitting to commemorate (the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment in 2020) by voting to elevate women to a place that is today reserved exclusively for the men who shaped American history. That place is on our paper money. And that new portrait can become a symbol of greater changes to come."
W20 mounted an informal election, starting with 100 candidates.
An impressive list of powerful women who were considered included: Amelia Earhart, Belva Lockwood, Elise Strang L'Esperance, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Jeannette Rankin, Lucretia Mott, Maggie Kuhn, Margaret Chase Smith, Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones), Maya Angelou, Nellie Bly, Sally Ride, Victoria Woodhull, Bella Abzug, Abigail Adams, Shirley Temple Black. Elizabeth Blackwell, Amelia Bloomer, Angelina Grimke, Sarah Grimke, Jacqueline Kennedy, Coretta Scott King, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothea Lange, Sybil Ludington, Dolly Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Margaret Mead, Georgia O'Keefe, Annie Oakley, Sacajawea, Lucy Stone, Babe Didrickson Zacharias. (Only deceased persons are honored on U.S. currency.)
The possibilities were whittled down by a series of well thought out processes. The final four candidates were chosen from a field of 15 in a five-week Primary Round which garnered more than 256,000 votes from March 1st to April 5th.
The finalists are: Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and Wilma Mankiller:
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