The plan to unveil the Harriet Tubman $20 bill in 2020, a President Barack Obama administration initiative, has been postponed until at least 2026, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as reported in the New York Times and other media outlets. Therefore, historic figure Harriet Tubman’s face gracing the $20 bill will not occur until President Trump leaves office and will unlikely be in circulation until 2028. Tubman was a former slave, abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.
President Andrew Jackson’s image has been on the $20 since 1928. Mnuchin, concerned that the president might create uproar by canceling the new bill altogether, has delayed its redesign until Trump is out of office, some senior Treasury Department officials have said.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump criticized the Obama administration’s plans for the bill. That April, Trump called the change “pure political correctness” and suggested that Tubman, whom he praised, could be added to a far less common denomination, like the $2 bill.
“Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill,” Trump said back in 2016. Trump has frequently described Jackson, whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office, as a populist hero who reminds him of himself. Two months into his presidency, Trump stopped to lay a wreath at Jackson’s tomb at the Hermitage, his plantation in Nashville, Tenn. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Trump told a crowd gathered there. The delay comes three years after Mnuchin’s predecessor, Jacob J. Lew, announced plans for a sweeping and symbolic redrawing of the currency that would see Tubman replace the slaveholding Jackson on the face of the note.
During a recent congressional hearing, Mnuchin said that he is currently working on enhancing the anti-counterfeiting security features of U.S. currency, focusing first on the $10 and $50 bills. Designing new imagery is on the back burner. “It is my responsibility now to focus on what is the issue of counterfeiting and the security features,” Mnuchin said. “The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary down the road.”
Tubman was born into slavery, escaped and then returned to the South, where she led other slaves to freedom. She was a Union scout during the Civil War and later advocated women’s voting rights. Jackson orchestrated the removal of Native Americans from lands to the east of the Mississippi River and sent them marching west on the so-called Trail of Tears.
“There is no excuse for the administration’s failure to make this redesign a priority,” stated New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. “Sadly, this delay sends an unmistakable message to women and girls, and communities of color, who were promised they’d see Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.” Supporters of the tribute act in the House include Representatives Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and John Katko, Republican of New York.
