Harriet Tubman To Be The Next Face On Your $20 Bill
So who are you going to have a staring match with in a $20 bill soon?
According to The Women on 20s campaign to pick a female face, the winner is Harriet Tubman. She was an escaped slave whose famed ingenuity and courage led other captives to freedom.
"Tubman narrowly edged Eleanor Roosevelt, finishing with 118,328 votes to Roosevelt's 111,227, according to Women on 20s. More than 600,000 votes were cast over 10 weeks, including more than 350,000 in the final round that began on April 5," according to npr.
Earlier, Roosevelt had led Tubman by almost 15,000 votes, but the final round reversed their fortunes.
The $20 bill is of special historical significance, as she had got $20 from U.S. government as her monthly pension for being a nurse, scout, cook and spy during the Civil War, and also for being the widow of a veteran.
However, she had to first submit complete documents and go through a deposition to prove that she was married to her husband, who had fought for the Union. Only in 1892, she got the widow's pension of $8 a month, according to vox.
A new petition seeks President Obama "to order the Secretary of the Treasury to change the current portrait portrayed on our American $20 bank note to reflect the remarkable accomplishments of an exemplary American woman who has helped shape our Nation's great history."
The Women on 20s vote was interesting. Other winners included Rosa Parks in the third position, with 64,173 votes, and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to become the Cherokee Nation's chief, in the fourth position, with 58,703 votes. The list went on to feature Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Clara Barton and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Currently, the faces on the US currency notes include George Washington, Andrew Jackson and other figures at the discretion of the secretary of the Treasury Department. The department's own records "do not reveal the reason that portraits of these particular statesmen were chosen in preference to other persons of equal importance and prominence," according to the website.
The Treasury explains that "By law, only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on U.S. currency and securities."
The Women on 20s group points out: "President Obama already has publicly expressed an interest in featuring more women on our money. With at least 100,000 votes, we can get the President's ear. That's how many names it takes to petition the White House for executive action. We went way beyond that with well over a half a million votes backed by names and email addresses."
Tubman's death centennial was in 2013. NPR's Michel Martin gave a speech about her to the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture's chief curator, Jacqueline Serwer: "Well, she was very smart and had a wonderful memory and knew these byways and these secret routes like the back of her hand and so, when she rounded up a group of people whom she was going to lead to freedom, she knew exactly where to go, where to hide, when to wait, how to escape the slave hunters who were looking for her and looking for the folks that she was bringing to freedom. And she was just very clever. She was also very disciplined, so people, you know, who were tired or who wanted to do something different - she was very strong and could be very harsh at the same time that she was a very kind woman."
