Trump may stop plan to change US$20 bill
Print Edition
PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for his 19th century predecessor Andrew Jackson is stoking fears he may cancel plans to replace him on the US$20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
The Treasury Department announced a year ago that by 2020 it would remove slave-owner Jackson’s likeness in favor of an image of Tubman, an African-American who escaped from slavery and helped others to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
Tubman, who also fought for women’s right to vote, would be the first African-American and first woman to appear on a US banknote.
With 9 billion in circulation, the US$20 bill is among the most widely used denomination along with US$1 bills, which number 11.7 billion.
During Barack Obama’s administration, the Treasury conducted a survey on who should be the first woman to appear on the currency, and selected Tubman.
Another survey by “Women on 20s,” a group calling for a woman to appear on the US$20 banknote, collected more than a half-million responses in an online poll in which Tubman came first.
But since Trump’s election, Andrew Jackson’s stock has risen strikingly in the White House, a development that worries Tubman supporters.
“We are keeping a very close eye as to any further signal and any delay or change in the progress toward having design and production ready for Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill by 2020,” Women on 20s Founder Barbara Ortiz told reporters.
Jackson oversaw the start of forcible expulsions of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to areas west of the Mississippi River, resulting in thousands of deaths from starvation, exposure and disease.
As a military officer, he also led an invasion of Spanish Florida to destroy the “Negro Fort,” where former slaves had settled.
Five days after his inauguration, Trump displayed Jackson’s portrait prominently in the Oval Office.
Last week, Trump laid a wreath by Jackson’s tomb at his former Tennessee plantation, marking the 250th anniversary of his birth. Trump praised the “very great” Jackson for taking on “an arrogant elite.”
“Does that sound familiar to you?” Trump asked.
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