No woman is depicted on U.S. paper currency. This makes our money a bit exceptional among the banknotes of our international peers, several of which--including Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan and Mexico--have emblazoned paper money with various national heroines' portraits. In this country, suffragist Susan B. Anthony and the Native American explorer Sacagawea grace little-used dollar coins, but it's not quite the same. So an internet movement calling itself "WomenOn20s" has started crowd-sourcing the selection of a proposed female replacement for President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill--to be followed by an actual request for a substitution to President Barack Obama. It might actually come to pass. Obama has expressed broad sympathy with the idea, and he has full legal authority, through the secretary of the Treasury, to order a redesign.
We're for it--with a caveat or two. By now, the contributions of women to the United States' history need no elaboration, but they are still insufficiently acknowledged in the paraphernalia of nationhood, such as paper money; the mostly presidential and entirely male white faces of which were selected in 1929. Our pick for a female addition would be Harriet Tubman, the courageous African American who escaped from slavery in Maryland, helped others do the same, served the Union as an intelligence agent during the Civil War and then, after the war, advocated women's suffrage.
The $20 bill is a likely candidate for a change because, of the men on the four most widely circulated bills--George Washington on the $1, Abraham Lincoln on the $5, Alexander Hamilton on the $10 and Jackson--the latter's reputation has undergone the greatest revision under modern scrutiny. Once unequivocally, and justly, lionized for victory at the Battle of New Orleans, for quelling the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and for leading a small-D democratic political movement, Old Hickory's career nevertheless bears the taint of his cruel policy toward Native Americans.
Which brings us to our caveats: For all his flaws, Jackson's ouster from the $20 could trigger a currency culture war between his defenders and detractors, potentially undermining the entire unifying spirit of the include-a-woman enterprise. It could also set off a cascade of controversies about the merits of everyone else on U.S. money. The solution is simple, really: add Tubman without subtracting Jackson. The government could issue the same number of 20's as always, half bearing Tubman's face, half Jackson's. Another option is bills with two faces each; other countries have done so.
Of course, all of this must be done with due consideration for the fact that money is, well, money; design changes to the world's most widely used, and most recognizable, currency must therefore protect its security and foster confidence in it around the world. Surely, though, these are superable obstacles.
Editorial on 04/14/2015