It's Official: Abolitionist Harriet Tubman Will Replace Andrew Jackson on $20 Bill

Treasury Department caves to demands to remove "all-male pantheon" of slave owners.

After a year of complaining, the group Women on 20s was finally able to convince the Treasury Department to remove slave owning-president Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replace him with freed slave and abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will make the official announcement on Wednesday. According to Politico, Jackson isn't completely removed from the currency but will be booted to the back of the bill. Lew is also looking to remove Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the Treasury Department, from the $10 but the only expected change to that bill at this point is putting icons from the women's suffrage movement on the back.

But even though this should be good news for the feminist group who have lobbied for this moment, they are still not satisfied and really, that's not surprising. Here's what they said on their website:

After more than a year of campaigning to convince the U.S. Treasury to replace the portrait of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with the face of a female American hero, Women On 20s is ready to claim victory, but only if Secretary Lew commits to issuing the new $20 bill alongside the $10 by 2020.

Secretary Lew’s choice of the freed slave and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman to one day feature on the $20 note is an exciting one, especially given that she emerged as the choice of more than half a million voters in our online poll last Spring. Not only did she devote her life to racial equality, she fought for women’s rights alongside the nation’s leading suffragists.

We are gratified to have sparked a conversation about the symbols and historical figures that define us as a nation. But until Secretary Lew commits to inclusion of women in the portrait gallery of paper currency in the near future, we see work ahead.

A liberal's work is never done.

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