Freedom fighter Harriet Tubman may not be the face of the new $20 bill, but thanks to a group of supporters she will be the subject of several commemorative coins, according to Spectrum News.
Woody Keown, the president of the Freedom Center, has been working on getting coins made with the activist since 2020. His original campaign was to have her replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 note, but when that was shut down and placed on a nearly 10-year delay by lawmakers, he shifted to get her representation on another form of currency.
Obama administration treasury secretary Jack Lew advocated for Tubman, the former enslaved woman who helped hundreds to freedom through the Underground Railroad, to replace Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, on the $20 bill.
However, when former president Donald Trump was campaigning, he made it one of his missions to dismantle those plans. He made the effort a symbol of “pure political correctness,” something his supporters were against.
Once he won the election, his administration’s treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin made good on his promise and put a halt on those plans, explaining it was more practical to redesign the $10 and $50 bills first to stop counterfeiters in a new security initiative.
With the dream thwarted, Keown believed a “faster” way to have her commemorated is to push getting a coin made.
The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Commemorative Coin Act was passed by lawmakers and signed into law by President Joe Biden on Aug. 3, 2022. According to Congress, the Department of the Treasury voted to mint and issue 50,000 $5 gold coins, 400,000 $1 silver coins, and 750,000 half-dollar clad coins in honor of the abolitionist.
The coins will be commemorative.
Keown is currently working with others to bring the coin vision to fruition. He has been part of a committee that has provided historical information about Tubman to the government to help in the design of the coins. “We…
Read the full article here
