Antoine Sanfuentes and Jackie Wattles Alexander Hamilton will stay on the front of the $10 bill, and Harriet Tubman will boot Andrew Jackson from the $20, sources tell CNN. The announcement is expected to come later Wednesday from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who will also reveal that a montage of leaders from the women’s suffrage movement will be added to the back of the $10. A Treasury official confirmed to CNN that a portrait of Tubman, a women’s rights advocate and abolitionist known for bringing slaves to safety on the Underground Railroad, will appear on the $20. The redesigned $10 bill is expected to enter circulation by 2020, though it’s unclear what the $20’s time frame is.
The women pictured on the back of the $10 will be the first to appear on U.S. paper currency in more than 100 years. The matter has been at the center of intense debate for some time. Lew first told America in June 2015 that he would feature a woman on a new version of the $10 bill alongside Hamilton. Lew promised to spend time collecting public opinion, and it turned out that Americans had plenty to say about the matter.
The question of which woman should receive this particular honor was hardly the only point of contention. Some argued that a woman shouldn’t have to share her bill with a man. Others argued Alexander Hamilton shouldn’t have to share top billing with anyone else. He was the nation’s first treasury secretary, a key figure in the history of the American banking system, and Lew himself even called Hamilton a personal hero.
Separately, there has been a chorus of voices calling to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20. His legacy includes the “Trail of Tears,” in which he forcibly relocated Native Americans, leading to the death of thousands. So it makes sense that Lew decided to replace Jackson on the front of that bill with Harriet Tubman — Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this story
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