Join experts in finance and culture in our upcoming Facebook Lives!

Representation and accessibility on our United States Currency

Saturday, February 27

Facebook Live: Join the Event

Featuring: Jeff Lovitky and Women on 20s Founder, Barbara Ortiz Howard

Jeff Lovitky works primarily in the area of health law and government procurement law. He also works in the area of disability rights. In 2002, he filed suit on behalf of the American Council of the Blind (ACB), alleging that the design of paper currency violated the rights of the visually impaired.This suit culminated in an injunction against the U.S. government, requiring that the next redesign of currency be made accessible to the blind and visually impaired.

For the Love of Money

Tuesday, February 16

Facebook Live: Join the Event

Featuring: Dr. Harcourt Fuller and Women on 20s Founder, Barbara Ortiz Howard

Dr. Harcourt Fuller is a Fulbright Global Scholar and creator of the Black Money Exhibit, a multi-media, traveling museum exhibit featuring money trees, books, clothing, and music. The exhibit’s hundreds of banknotes, depict Black, African, and African Diaspora history and cultures, and talks about what money tells us about ourselves and the significance of those stories.

Barbara Ortiz Howard is a dynamo who hatched this ambitious campaign. Most days start out for Barbara on a scaffold, inspecting building facades, balconies and roofs or overseeing operations for the exterior restoration company she started almost 30 years ago in the New York City area. Undeterred by the challenges of being a woman executive in a male-dominated field, Barbara enjoys her mission of taking care of people and their buildings. With the Women On 20s campaign, she aims, again, to literally raise the profile of a woman in a male-dominated field.

This movement began 6 years ago. Learn about the journey, America's engagement and how communities and leaders feel today about changing the faces of our currency.

Timeline
Coin Week: Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Back on Track Under Biden Administration
NJ.com, Opinion: White mansplaining, not tech issues, keeps Tubman off the $20
ThoughtCo: Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill

Harriet Tubman

CNN, Opinion: Harriet Tubman on $20 bill symbolizes a new era - CNN- Peniel Joseph

Joe Madison The Black Eagle | Listen on SiriusXM: Joe Biden on Honoring Harriet Tubman 

NJ.com, Opinion - White mansplaining, not tech issues, keeps Tubman off the $20

Univision, Opinion - How Dreams Come True

Andrew Jackson

The Examiner: Will voters remove Andrew Jackson statues?

The Daily Texan: Sharing faces on bills invalidates attempted progress

Women's Equality

Cosmopolitan: The Change to the $20 Bill Is Both Thrilling and Disappointing

Accessibility

Letter to Secretary Yellen: Support for Tubman on $20 and inclusion of accessibility feature

The New York Times: Blind Win Court Ruling on U.S. Currency

No Thank You to Tubman $20

Washington Post: Keep Harriet Tubman – and all women – off the $20 bill 

Britteny Cooper (Time): Putting Harriet Tubman's Face on the $20 Bill Isn't Progress

$10 Bill Changes

Charlotte Observer - We are about to make a mistake on the $10 bill 

The Daily Pennsylvanian - Penn grad Alice Paul joins suffragists on the back of redesigned $10 bill

USA Today - 19th Amendment: These 20 Black women fought for voting rights

Battle Creek Enquirer - Will Sojourner Truth and other women still be on the $10 bill?

The Back of The Bill Is Like The Back of the Bus

Tween Tribune - Women get plan on paper money 

NY Times - A Woman's Shot at the $20 

Ms. Magazine - $20: George Floyd, Harriet Tubman and the Value of Black Lives

Suffrage

Because of Them We Can - Ida B Wells and Fellow Black Suffragists Are Recognized on the 100th Year Anniversary of Women's Suffrage

Pro & Con Discussion

Democracy Now - Honor or Insult 

KPFA - Rethinking Tubman and Jackson

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD:

WHEN THEN-TREASURY Secretary Jack Lew decided in 2016 to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, he knew it would be up to the next administration to implement the change. But it seemed highly unlikely that anyone would upend a plan to honor this great American hero with a currency redesign that would also include depictions of historic events such as the suffragist march on Washington. “I don’t think somebody’s going to probably want to do that — to take the image of Harriet Tubman off of our money? To take the image of the suffragists off?” Mr. Lew said incredulously.

No one can blame him for a failure to imagine that any future administration would be so petty and narrow-minded as to go out of its way to thumb its nose at women, minorities and history. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin disclosed to Congress on Wednesday that redesign of the $20 bill to include an image of the former slave and leader of the Underground Railroad, slated for next year to mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, has been pushed back to 2028. Tubman was selected following a massive grass-roots campaign to include a woman on U.S. paper currency.

The explanation Mr. Mnuchin offered for the delay — the need for more time for “counterfeiting issues” — would be laughable if it were not so insulting. Are we really expected to believe that the administration, one that boasts about its can-do capabilities, needs eight more years to implement a new design? If indeed counterfeiting matters are the primary reason for currency design, shouldn’t you start with the $20 bill, since it is one of the most widely circulated?

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Alan Rappeport

WASHINGTON — Harriet Tubman — former slave, abolitionist, “conductor” on the Underground Railroad — will not become the face of the $20 bill until after President Trump leaves office, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday.

Plans to unveil the Tubman bill in 2020, an Obama administration initiative, would be postponed until at least 2026, Mr. Mnuchin said, and the bill itself would not likely be in circulation until 2028.

Until then, bills with former President Andrew Jackson’s face will continue to pour out of A.T.M.s and fill Americans’ wallets.

Mr. Mnuchin, concerned that the president might create an uproar by canceling the new bill altogether, was eager to delay its redesign until Mr. Trump was out of office, some senior Treasury Department officials have said. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump criticized the Obama administration’s plans for the bill.

FROM TIME MAGAZINE

OUR CNN OP-ED:

OUR TIME MAG. OP ED:

By Susan Ades Stone & Barbara Ortiz Howard

Dear Secretary Lew,

We have tried over many months to get your attention, most recently in an email two weeks ago, to express our concern that the opportunity to make history with real, meaningful change may be slipping away. We say this not just as Women On 20s, but as representatives of the two million people who have participated in some way in our campaign over the past year. No one is more attuned to the will of the people on this issue than we are. Tens of thousands of people still interact with our website and social media pages on a weekly basis. And barely a day goes by that we do not get a press inquiry seeking our perspective. On the day of your announcement last June we similarly had our finger on the nation’s pulse and we sensed right away that the choice of changing only the $10 would draw strong public criticism. Now we see trouble brewing again.

After your appearance on Charlie Rose, we carefully parsed your words, and we fear that you believe the public will be satisfied with giving women nothing but a cameo role on the back of a minor bill. It will take a microscope to see who those individuals are, and we’ll be left with another decade or more of woefully inadequate representation of women and their worth.

From Time:

Excerpt:

At issue is the fate of Hamilton, a founding father Lew describes as a personal hero who served as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary and recently enjoyed pop culture celebrity as the star of a hit Broadway musical. In early 2015, the Treasury department sent a memo to the President proposing to put a woman as the portrait on the $10 bill, while recommending that the design also honor Hamilton’s legacy. Last summer, Lew launched a public campaign to ask citizens to send in recommendations for which woman should hold this new place of honor.

Our New York Times Op-Ed

By Susan Ades Stone & Barbara Ortiz Howard

When we started “Women on 20s” a year ago to engage the nation in replacing Andrew Jackson with an iconic American woman on the $20 bill, we never imagined that Alexander Hamilton would be pleading for his life in a redesign of the $10 note. But now Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star who plays Hamilton in his own eponymous hit Broadway musical, is celebrating an assurance from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew that Hamilton is safe. As Mr. Miranda tweeted to his followers, Lew told him, “You’re going to be very happy.” But will the redesign make women happy?

From the New York Times:

Excerpt: 

So the $10 note became the vehicle for an administration eager to make a historic statement about women before President Obama leaves office. Despite the complaints, officials say, they cannot switch bills.

Yet they might have better anticipated the blowback, critics say.

Even before Mr. Lew announced last summer that a woman would be on the $10 bill, a group called Women On 20s inspired Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, and others in Congress to introduce legislation calling for a woman’s portrait on the 20. The National Organization for Women got behind the campaign, according to Terry O’Neill, president of the group.