A Woman’s Place Is on the $20
You may have heard that there’s a movement afoot to kick Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with a woman. Finally, we've got a current event that’s not depressing. How so?
The only woman who has ever shown up on American paper currency–not counting Lady Liberty–is Martha Washington, who starred on an 1886 silver certificate. The fact that it was Martha adds insult to injury. She was an excellent first lady, but her exceptional fame is tied to the ancient idea that the greatest women were simply the ones married to the greatest men. (An alternative theory was that the greatest women were the mothers of the greatest men, and George Washington’s mother was equally celebrated, even though her son found her extremely irritating.)
Now, a website called “Women on 20s” has posted biographies of 15 notable women in American history and invited visitors to vote for a female face to put in Jackson’s place. The goal is to get the job done by the anniversary of women’s suffrage in 2020.
“Oh, my gosh! We’re just going crazy here,” said Susan Ades Stone, who has been running the project along with Barbara Ortiz Howard, a New York businesswoman. Things do sound satisfyingly hectic. The vote total recently passed 100,000; the over stressed website has gotten balky; and Stone, a journalist, has been on the phone so incessantly her husband has temporarily left home.
Amazing this idea hasn't come up sooner. “Australians have a man on one side of each note and a woman on the other,” said Matthew Wittmann of the American Numismatic Society. “It’s pretty remarkable we can’t find a woman for any denomination.”
The U.S. Treasury hasn't changed the faces on the bills since 1929, when Andrew Jackson elbowed out Grover Cleveland on the $20. Why, you may be asking yourself, did they pick Jackson? And why was Grover Cleveland there to begin with? Nobody seems to know.
Among the bills that are circulating now, the featured faces are all founding fathers (Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin) plus Jackson, Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, who graces the $50 bill. “Women on 20s” picked Jackson to depose mainly because of his horrific history with Native Americans, although there’s also the rather blissful note that Jackson disapproved of paper currency.
The nominees for replacements were chosen from a list of 100 women by jurists who were asked to consider both achievement and obstacles overcome. That tends to weigh the choices toward political warriors–like Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger–rather than artists or athletes. ...
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