MiamiDAP, unfortunately, we’ve picked our presidents by gender (and skin color until 8 years ago) for over 200 years – so limiting the pictures on our bills to just presidents means that the majority of our population isn’t represented on the bills. I think it is a great change.
Fans of Alexander Hamilton have besieged the White House with petitions & letters since they floated the idea of removing him last year. (I know, because I wrote to the White House the first day they announced that he might be taken off, and so did one of my kids and a couple of my friends). I don’t think Hamilton had actually opened on Broadway yet (was still off Broadway), but I am sure the swell of popularity this year now that it is on Broadway didn’t hurt – my guess is a lot of people who have come to understand Hsmilton better through the musical have weighed in. The guy founded our monetary system, while Andrew Jackson didn’t even believe in paper money.
Harriet Tubman seems to be a good choice. She was heroic in helping slaves escape, she helped the Union Army in the Civil War, and did not make any missteps in her life that would discredit her legacy.
I don’t think it was the plea; I think it was the new-found popularity of Hamilton – because of the show – that led the Treasury Secretary to keep Hamilton on the $10. Much of the country is in the middle of Hamilton-mania; it would be an odd time to announce his removal from the bill.
@GMTplus7 Well, in the case of the $10 bill, it’s because Lin Manuel Miranda asked that Hamilton be kept on the front (this has been reported by reputable news agencies). The Treasury Secretary had previously announced that a woman would replace Hamilton. I still can’t quite get over this. Even if it was “Hamilton mania,” it’s NOT warranted in my opinion.
Lin was not the first or only one to ask – see the article below. What is your beef, anyway? They were going to revise one bill, why not take Jackson off instead? He is an ironic choice for paper money to start with, whereas Hamilton is the founder of our monetary system.
Andrew Jackson’s legacy was worse regarding Native Americans as he not only presided over the forcible removal of the Cherokee, but also refused to enforce a Supreme Court ruling in their favor:
Because of this legacy, some Native-Americans make it a point to request payment in currency other than $20 bills with Jackson’s portrait on them.
So maybe the multi-person scene with Jackson on the back of the $20 will be an etching of him fobbing off responsibility for the Panic of 1837 onto his successor?
But seriously, there are a couple other presidents who have probably been on the wrong side of history on more or bigger issues than Jackson, but perhaps none who were quite so consistently there. Wish he’d been banished from the bill entirely, I do.
I think they should ape the old Late Night w/Conan “celebrity babies” thing and do facial mashups: Jackson/Tubman on the $20, and maybe put Hamilton’s face in the middle with the three ladies’ faces surrounding it, like a messed up daisy, on the $10. Similar foolishness/hilarity on the other bills.
I mean, since founding our economic system and being among the founding fathers/good presidents is no longer adequate to fly solo on paper notes of tender in this hypersensitive age.
Why not create a $7 bill and put someone’s dog on it, while we’re at it? And a cat on the back to avoid hurting cat lovers’ feelings.
(I’m not saying the ladies don’t deserve it; I just think this is another case of “much ado about nothing”. or who the F cares?
The people on the bills earned their places there. They helped make some of the major decisions and did the work necessary to keep us viable both in their times and ours.
Why not create a full-time $3 with MLK on it, a $30 with Tubman on it, and a $40 with the three other ladies on it? Give them their full
due and leave alone Abe, Hamilton and Jackson’s paper. Cripes.
I think people are forgetting that historically, having your face on US currency was a fairly short-term proposition. And when you have a lot of people to honor, why not rotate through them all?
Harriet Tubman was a fine woman and a true hero. But given that, if historians were to list the top ‘worthies’ of American history to put on the money, how high would she have ranked? She was chosen because of her race and sex and to deny that is to deny political reality. So in that sense her pick was political correctness.
Andrew Jackson was our 7th President. Why didn’t Adams, Adams, Monroe or Madison come before him on currency anyway? Was he so much greater? What about Grant? He wasn’t so hot at all.
I think these choices have only ever been political. There is nothing sacred about them and I don’t mind changing them around a bit. Just leave Ben Franklin alone… his name has become synonymous with the $100 bill.
Well, maybe one could ask them…but given the highly negative retrospective views of Jackson’s presidency out there, she might well have ranked higher than him, in any event.
Seriously, I don’t get the “political correctness” argument, unless the claim is that any choice of a female face for currency would be simply the result of political correctness (in its pejorative sense), and that has squicky implications for me, to say the least.
35-Madison, the father of the Constitution is more worthy as far as his impact on the U. S. than Harriet Tubman. But the historically challenged crowd would shout 'slaveholder'!
Grant was the single individual most responsible for saving the Union.