After a successful campaign to honor women’s suffrage for its 100-year anniversary in 2020 by finally catching us up with other countries and putting a woman’s face on a common piece of US currency, the US treasury has announced they’re planning to put a woman on the $10 bill! And you know what’s even better? The winner chosen by the campaign is none other than famed slavery abolitionist and “Underground Railroad” organizer Harriet Tubman.
Yes please. (via Wikimedia)
So not only would this be the first time in 150 years that a woman would appear on US bank notes, but Tubman would also be the very African-American to appear on the paper currency of this supposed great melting pot of ours. It’s a win-win wherein we win twice, and bigots win 0 times—AKA the best kind.
Sadly, this doesn’t mean that Tubman, or any of the other candidates if the Treasury doesn’t go by the results of the poll, would get the sole honor of adorning the ten.
You can relax that look of concern now, Hamilton. (via Eli Christman)
They plan on also continuing to produce tens with Alexander Hamilton on them, as Treasury secretary Jack Lew told reporters (via The Guardian),
It was personally very important to me to make sure that as we make this decision we continue to honour Alexander Hamilton who played such a formative role in the creation our country, the establishment of democracy as we know it and the principle of the soundness of our currency.
Lew also said the new series of $10 bills will “focus on celebrating a champion for our inclusive democracy,” which is exactly the kind of thing we like to hear. If the spot doesn’t go to Tubman, other frontrunners in the Women on 20s campaign were Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony, who campaigned for women’s suffrage, so they’ve got plenty of good options.
Of course, this is the Internet, and you’re bound to run into someone who somehow manages to be upset by the idea of a man being forced to share “his” spot on money with a woman—despite the fact that it should be OK to swap some face entirely. If that happens, just ask them, “Would you have been able to name who was on the $10 bill before this was a thing?” That’s generally a pretty quick conversation ender for that line of argument.
(via The Guardian, featured image via mgstanton)
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