The administration of United States President Joe Biden wants the figure of African-American slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) to appear on $ 20 bills, the White House reported Monday.
“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman in the face of the new $ 20 bills,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a news conference.
“It’s important that our accounts, our money…,” he continued, “reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image on our new $ 20 bills will certainly reflect that.”
The initiative to put Tubman on the banknotes was launched by the Barack Obama administration (2009-2017), of which Biden was vice president.
The Trump administration inherited that decision, which involved deleting from the $ 20 bills the amount of the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), who had slaves and who was sometimes praised by the former Republican president himself.
Trump was even publicly against replacing Jackson’s image with that of Tubman, who was born a slave and became famous after her escape for her work of freeing other African Americans.
Despite the fact that the Obama administration had determined that Tubman would start appearing on the $ 20 bills from 2020, Trump’s Treasury Department announced at the time that this new monetary design would not be available until 2028.
Tubman’s appearance on the bill would have strong symbolic value for many Americans, as it would mean that a slave owner – Jackson – would be replaced by an abolitionist who joined a clandestine network to get dozens of blacks out of the south of the country. , at the risk of her own life.
Tubman would also be the first woman and the first African American to appear on American paper money, now with seven white men playing significant roles in America’s earliest political history.