WASHINGTON, D.C. — A move to replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of $20 bills with Maryland abolitionist and one-time slave Harriet Tubman is officially on hold while Donald Trump is in office. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin confirmed the delay this week in replacing the image of a president who forced native Cherokees onto the deadly Trail of Tears and traded slaves with that of a woman who helped hundreds gain freedom via the Underground Railroad.
Jackson is described as a populist and President Trump keeps a portrait of the leader on prominent display in the Oval Office. Former adviser Steve Bannon is an admirer of Jackson’s views, including a skepticism about immigrants arriving in the United States, and suggested the portrait be installed, which Trump agreed to, Politico reports.
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, there aren’t any records from the time when the decision to put Jackson on the $20 bill. His presidency is most remembered for his brutal treatment of Native Americans. Jackson pushed for the Indian Removal Act, which displaced tens of thousands of Cherokees from their native lands in the Southeast to regions west of the Mississippi River. The move killed thousands uprooted from their ancestral homes.
The Obama administration announced plans to put Tubman on the $20 bill, but that was put on hold once Trump took office. Tubman served as a Union scout during the Civil War and championed women’s voting rights.
Any change in the currency has been postponed until at least 2026, Mnuchin said Wednesday, and the revamped $20 bill would not likely be in circulation until 2028, the New York Times reports.
Rather than have Trump be criticized for canceling the new bill altogether, Mnuchin instead put a hold on the redesign until Trump is out of office, the newspaper reports. The president called the move to feature Tubman “pure political correctness” and said she could be honored on the $2 bill.
Consumers are rebelling against the delay, buying up a stamp created by artist Dano Wall that puts Tubman’s image on a $20, reports The Washington Post. Wall said he has sold out of his stamps and plans to create more.
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“My goal is to get 5,000 stamps out there,” Wall told the Post. “If there are 5,000 people consistently stamping currency, we could get a significant percent of circulating $20 bills [with the Tubman] stamp, at which point it would be impossible to ignore.”
Mnuchin confirmed the delay at a congressional hearing, where he said the department is focused on boosting anti-counterfeiting security features of the $10 and $50 bills.
“The administration’s decision to drag their feet and delay the redesign of the $20 until 2028 is unacceptable,” Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings said in a statement. “Our currency must reflect the important role women, and especially women of color, have played in our nation’s history.”
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Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in 2017 in an effort to place Tubman’s image on the $20 bill.
Cummings said previously that “Harriet Tubman was called the Moses of her people, because after she escaped slavery, she courageously made 19 trips to the South to free more than 300 enslaved African Americans.”
“Her courage, conviction and commitment to equality represent the best of America and it is long past time we recognize her place in history,” the Baltimore Democrat said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., originally sponsored a bill in 2015, directing the Department of the Treasury to put Tubman on the face of the $10 bill, replacing Alexander Hamilton. But the switch to the $20 occurred after historians and fans of the musical “Hamilton” objected to altering the $10 bill.
Shaheen recently submitted a new bill that would replace Jackson with Tubman on the $20.
Tubman was one of the finalists in a campaign to put the face of a woman on the $20 bill by the group Women On 20s. She was born a slave about 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, who used the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in the North in 1849, then helped others gain their freedom. She also actively spied against the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The four finalists to break the paper currency barrier were Tubman; Rosa Parks, Civil Rights activist; human rights advocate and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and Cherokee nation chief Wilma Mankiller.