21 June 2015

Kicking dead white guys off the bill


Matt Lee has an article in the Philadelphia Metro about changes in US currency:
Women on 20s has announced that Americans have voted for Harriet Tubman (photo) to replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Women on 20s described the abolitionist and humanitarian as 'Herculean', in an extended biography that captures the accomplishments and importance of Tubman to American history. Considered by many the Moses of her time, escaped slave Tubman became one of the country's leading abolitionists before the Civil War. She returned to the South an estimated nineteen times to rescue her family and others from bondage as a 'conductor' on what was known as the Underground Railroad, an elaborate secret network of safe houses leading to freedom in the North. Later, with her intimate knowledge of the geography and transportation systems of the South, she became a valuable asset to the Union army as a spay and scout. Her accomplishments were attributed to extraordinary courage, shrewdness, and determination. The Quaker Thomas Garrett said of her: "If she had been a white woman, she would have been heralded as the greatest woman of her age." The organization has, for the last several months, been asking people to visit their website to vote for which American woman should on the most-used bill in US currency. A little more than 600,000 people voted, and more than a million votes were cast in several rounds of a very tight race.
Mary Bowerman has a USA Today article about it:
The United States Treasury announced plans to put a woman on the ten-dollar bill. The change, which will happen in 2020, is notable, not just because a woman will be on paper currency, but also because the faces on American money have been relatively stable. "Portraits do not change often," according to Casey Hernandez, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department.
US currency as we know it today really began in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act established the Federal Reserve as the nation's central bank. In 1914, the reserve began issuing new bills called Federal Reserve notes— the same money we use today.
Four portraits have changed on bills since, although two of those changes occurred on denominations no longer printed. 
USA Today looks at currency changes over time:$5 bill: 1914: Front: President Abraham Lincoln; Back: Columbus in sight of land and the landing of the Pilgrims. Today: Front: Lincoln remains; Back: Changed to the Lincoln Memorial in 1929.
$10 bill: 1914: Front: President Andrew Jackson; Back: Scenes depicting agriculture and commerce. Today: Front: Former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (changed in 1929); Back: US Treasury building.
$20 bill: 1914: Front: President Grover Cleveland; Back: Scene representing transportation. Today: Front: Jackson, changed in 1929; Back: the White House.
$50 bill: 1914: Front: President Ulysses S. Grant; Back: Representation of Panama. Today: Front: Grant remains; Back: US Capitol.
$100 bill: 1914: Front: Benjamin Franklin; Back: Scenes representing labor, plenty, America, peace and commerce. Today: Front: Still Franklin; Back: Independence Hall.
The one dollar bill has remained George Washington through the years.
The reserve once printed bills with values as high as ten thousand dollars. They featured former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall and then President William McKinley on the $500 bill, starting in 1929; Alexander Hamilton and then Grover Cleveland on the $1,000 bill, starting in 1929; President James Madison on the $5,000 bill, former Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase on the $10,000 bill, and President Woodrow Wilson on the $100,000 bill.
On 14 July 1969, the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury discontinued bank notes of $500 and above.
Rico says that, given that it's his mother's side of the family, he'd like a stack of Wilsons, please. (And Rico doesn't care what woman goes on the ten, as long as it's not Hillary...)

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