Only very recently, I came across the website Women On 20s, which “aims to compel historic change by convincing President Obama that NOW is the time to put a woman’s face on our paper currency… 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.”
I got here late, so participants have already winnowed down the list from 30 to 15 candidates.
The process is quite self-explanatory:
1. Primary Voting. You may vote for three of 15 candidates…
2.Final Round Voting. When the Primary winners are announced, return to the voting booth to cast your ballot for one of the top three finalists.
3.Decision Day. On Decision Day, we will announce the people’s choice for the woman we’ll propose to President Obama for the new face of the $20.
“The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote. So it seems fitting to commemorate that milestone by voting to elevate women to a place that is today reserved exclusively for the men who shaped American history. That place is on our paper money. And that new portrait can become a symbol of greater changes to come.”
Why boot Andrew Jackson from the $20?
As this Slate article from 2014 put it:
Andrew Jackson engineered a genocide through the “Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, [his] campaigns to force at least 46,000 Cherokees, Choctaws, Muscogee-Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles off their ancestral lands.”
Moreover:
“He was a fierce opponent of paper money and the central banking system, and would probably be horrified to see his face on our national currency. Leaving him on the bill as a form of mockery could be the best insult. But complicated historical slights don’t translate: His face on our money implies an honor that Jackson’s legacy doesn’t deserve. Worse, it obscures the horrors of his presidency.”
Here are the candidates:
ALICE PAUL (1885 – 1977) – women’s suffrage movement leader
BETTY FRIEDAN (1921 – 2006) – author of the Feminine Mystique
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM (1924 – 2005) – first black woman elected to Congress
SOJOURNER TRUTH (C.1797 – 1883) – famous for her journeys on the underground railroad
RACHEL CARSON (1907 – 1964) – writer of the important environmental book Silent Spring
ROSA PARKS (1913 – 2005) – civil rights activist
BARBARA JORDAN (1936 – 1996) – first black woman in the South to be elected to the US House of Representatives
MARGARET SANGER (1879 – 1966) – opened the first birth control clinic in the US
PATSY MINK (1927 – 2002) – first woman of color elected to the House, and the first Asian American elected to Congress
CLARA BARTON (1821 – 1912) – the founder of the American Red Cross
HARRIET TUBMAN (C.1822 – 1913) – women’s rights activist and abolitionist
FRANCES PERKINS (1880 – 1965) – Secretary of Labor under FDR, first woman appointed to the US Cabinet
SUSAN B. ANTHONY (1820 – 1906) – women’s suffrage movement leader
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884 – 1962) – human rights activist and former first Lady
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (1815 – 1902) – women’s rights activist and abolitionist
The organizers claim they have mechanisms in place to prevent “stuffing the ballot.”
The Washington Post noted that “the group has been ‘sort of surprised at the lack of opposition’ to the campaign, and… hopes it will ‘get this conversation going.'”
Women on $20s executive director Susan Ades Stone added, “We wanna be the hashtag that says #sorryAndrew.”
There are some worthy candidates on this list, but some that would absolutely rile up the rightwing: Margaret Sanger and Rachel Carson leap out of the list for that reason. Frances Perkins might be a safe choice—US money honours people who had something to do with the federal government (presidents, for example, or Benjamin Franklin). Susan B. Anthony was already on the ill-fated $1 coin. Eleanor Roosevelt would be one of several of my sentimental favourites on this list, but I bet the right would hate that choice almost as much as Sanger or Carson. Maybe Clara Barton would be a compromise choice? But I don’t know that we’d want to honour someone just because they’re the least offensive to the most people…
I picked no one born in the 20th century, though if I had, it would have been Rachel Carson. Sanger WAS on my list of three. Anthony was not, only because she had been on the coin (though both Washington and Lincoln are on both.)
I voted for Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Eleanor Roosevelt. There’s no way our current Congress would put any of those women on our money, but I am all for removing Jackson.
Apparentlly. Congress doesn’t necessarily get a say, which would be good. I picked Tubman, Truth and Margaret Sanger.
It kind of tells a lot about our society that we can’t really think of a female to put on what we value the most, our money. All the current money sports powerful men, what powerful women have led our country?
Consider the failed $1 coin that first sported Susan B. Anthony, which was labeled ugly (!) and the later Sacajawea which was a depiction of a pregnant 14 year old girl who served as a guide and probably as a consort to a group of men who promptly forgot her when they were done traveling. Would the $1 coin succeed if it sported the image of a powerful and popular man?
My preferences would be Alice Paul or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These women risked their very lives and personal safety and comfort for a woman’s right to vote. That’s a compelling reason in and of itself. I also like Eleanor Roosevelt.
Actually, the $1 coin doesn’t work well in the US (though it does in Canada, and its equavelents elsewhere). The Presidential $1 coins were a bust, apparently, and the only way to get them now (since the Garfield coin) is through a retailer, much to my irritation.
Holy cow, I’ve never even HEARD of the $1 Presidential coins let alone seen one in circulation. Wikipedia says that several billion of these coins were minted. That’s not including special proof issues. What the hell happened to them all?
What I was getting at with my comment above was wondering if the image of a woman would actually debase the value of the money in American’s minds, subconsciously or otherwise. That would have to be a serious financial consideration. Canada can put Queen Elizabeth on its bills and a bird on its $1 coin, but that’s Canada. We have an empire to uphold, and everybody knows that empires are run by stern, powerful men.
Dan – I wrote about this a couple times: https://www.rogerogreen.com/2011/09/18/dollar-coin-gathers-dust/