WASHINGTON (AP) – With a change of administration, it looks like Harriet Tubman is moving to the front of the $ 20 bill again.
Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put the 19th-century abolitionist leader on the $ 20 bill.
Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had chosen Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, on the $ 20 bill.
But Tubman’s fate has been questionable since the 2016 presidential campaign based on critical remarks from then-candidate Donald Trump, who labeled the move as “ pure political correctness. ”
Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did not go ahead with the Obama administration’s decision. Instead, in 2019, Mnuchin announced a delay in redesigning the $ 20 bill to redesign the $ 10 and $ 50 bills first to improve security features to thwart counterfeiters.
The unveiling of the redesigned $ 20 bill featuring Tubman, famous for her efforts to force slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, was timed by the Obama administration to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment’s adoption that gives women the right to vote.
Under the schedule Mnuchin announced in May 2019, the redesigned $ 20 bill wouldn’t have come out until 2028, while final designs for the bill weren’t announced until 2026.
But Psaki told reporters at a briefing on Monday that she and other officials were surprised to learn that Tubman had been delayed on the $ 20 bill. With a change in administration, she said the Treasury Department was taking steps to resume efforts to put Tubman on the $ 20 bill.
“It’s important that our … money reflects our country’s history and diversity, and Harriet Tubman’s image on the new $ 20 bill would certainly reflect that,” Psaki said. “We’re exploring ways to speed up that effort.”
Psaki said details on a new timeline for the introduction of a redesigned $ 20 with Tubman would be announced when finalized by the Treasury Department. Biden has chosen Janet Yellen as his Finance Minister, the first woman to hold that position in the department’s 232 years.