The placement of abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the face of the twenty dollar bill replacing former President Andrew Jackson, who goes to the back of the bill, appeared the most significant change proposed by the government.
Other changes include redesign of the five and ten dollar bills to include women on the back of the bills.
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew called the proposed changes a move to “bring to life” figures and monuments of the nation’s history.
“This opens a very interesting discussion,” says Dr. William Harvey, president of Virginia-based Hampton University, a nearly 150-year-old institution whose early enrollment was a mix of freed slaves and Native Americans. Harvey declined further comment, saying he had not read the new announcement in detail.
At Nashville’s Fisk University, which also had Native Americans among its first enrollees when it was opened by abolitionists 150 years ago this year, historian Reavis L. Mitchell, chairman of the university’s department of history, said those who are concerned about the proposal moving Jefferson, a Tennessean, to the back of the twenty dollar bill should note he was not removed from the proposed redesign, given Jackson’s ownership of slaves and his signing of legislation as president that forced the relocation of Native Americans from the South to Oklahoma.
“It’s more significant he wasn’t moved out,” says Mitchell. “Black folks never wanted to move Whites out,” Mitchell said. “They just wanted to be equally recognized for our contribution. This country was first financed with the money from the slave trade.”
