While nothing has been confirmed, it certainly seems like Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is going to announce this week that a woman will replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Lew had originally planned to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, the forgotten orphan of American folding money. However, the first Treasury Secretary’s recent resurgence due to a musical you can’t get tickets to may have put the kibosh on that. On the other hand, Andrew Jackson is a deeply unpopular figure whose name is attached to one of the most shameful policy decisions in the history of the American presidency. Seems like a no-brainer.
Lew is hinting that he’s ready to pull the trigger on this. In an interview with CNBC, he talked about drastic changes to all future bills.
“When we started this conversation not quite a year ago, it wasn’t clear to me that millions of Americans were going to weigh in with their ideas,” he said. “We’re not just talking about one bill. We’re talking about the $5, the $10, and the $20. We’re not just talking about one picture on one bill. We’re talking about using the front and the back of the bill to tell an exciting set of stories.”
According to unnamed sources cited by CNN, the woman will be a representative of the struggle for racial equality and we’ll begin to see the new bills circulate in 2030. If Secretary Lew needs help, Twitter and Miss Colorado have some ideas, or he can look to Women on 20s, the organization that spearheaded the conversation last year. Their pick is Harriet Tubman — a choice which would surely be met with almost universal enthusiasm.
