Harriet Tubman Chosen to Replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 Bill

Alexander Hamilton has won this duel.

The Founding Father will remain on the front of the $10 bill, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday.

But on the back of the sawbuck, suffragists who fought to give women the right to vote will be added, including Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul.





And on the $20 bill, abolitionist Harriet Tubman is replacing President Andrew Jackson.

"I'm very excited by it and I think it's much bigger than just honoring one woman," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told NBC News. "This is about saying that our money is going to tell a much bigger part of our story."
Lew said the depictions of the women who fought for the right to vote is far more compelling than the steps of the Treasury building currently shown on the back of $10.





There will also be changes to the $5 bill. It will depict famous events from the Lincoln Memorial, such as the historic moment when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Marian Anderson to sing on the monument's steps because the concert halls in Washington D.C. were segregated.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have Dream" speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, will also be depicted.

The bills will be unveiled in 2020 — the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote. Lew said the new notes will go into circulation as fast as possible after that.
Last year, the U.S. Treasury surprised advocates who were pressing to get a woman on the $20 bill, by announcing a woman would go on the redesigned $10 bill. That drew outrage from defenders of Hamilton, who was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.

"We did this the old fashioned way, we said we were going to listen to the American people and we did. We heard a lot of commentary that a woman should be on the $20, not the $10," Lew told NBC News.

"There was a sense that's the bill that people use the most. If we're really going put a woman on a bill that people see, as being an important statement, it should be the $20."
Hamilton, who has experienced a resurgence in popularity thanks to a hit Broadway production, helped create the Treasury. Fans have been captivated with his life story.

"Hamilton's surge in popularity has been building over time, it didn't just happen now with the Broadway show," said Kari Winter, director of the Gender Institute at the University at Buffalo. "Over the last few years there have been major biographies written about him, so this has been happening for a few years now. Hamilton is a romantic figure in so many ways. He is one of our most interesting founders."

Related: Lawmakers Push Bills Campaign to Put a Woman on the Twenty

The Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society also cheered the decision.

"The news that Alexander Hamilton will retain his historically prominent place on US currency is a welcome validation of Hamilton's significance to the nation." the group's vice-president Nicole Scholet de Villavicencio said.

Known as "Moses" to her people, Tubman is famous for helping lead slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. She also helped nurse ill Union troops, helped fight for the end of slavery and was a suffragist who advocated for women to have the right to vote.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers lauded the choice.

Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, D-Illinois, who last year introduced legislation to push the Treasury to put a woman on the $20 bill, said in a statement that the move was a powerful symbol.

"It is crazy that women have been mostly absent from our money up until now, with only a few exceptions," Gutiérrez said in a statement. "Women and men are equal partners in our nation's success and our money should reflect that. Sure, it is only symbolic, but U.S. money is just about as powerful a symbol as there is in this world."

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, was similarly excited.