PD Editorial: Put a woman on the $20 bill

One way a nation honors its heroes is by placing their likenesses on its money. Judging by America’s money, though, one might erroneously conclude that our nation’s best and brightest were all old white men. Ours is a diverse nation shaped by men, women and people of all races and ethnicities. It’s time that our money reflect that.

A movement is afoot to put a woman on the $20 bill in 2020, the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. It would be a good start.

The $20 bill is a reasonable choice because it now features President Andrew Jackson. If most Americans remember him for anything, it is for driving Native Americans out of the American Southeast. The Trail of Tears saw the deaths of thousands during forced relocation, and it remains one of the worst stains on the country’s history.

The only argument against reassessing our currency is inertia, and that’s not much of an argument at all. Lest anyone reflexively declare that no woman is eligible to appear on a bill because no woman has been president, we remind you that neither were Benjamin Franklin ($100) nor Alexander Hamilton ($10).

America’s male banknote hegemony is unusual among nations. Bills in Mexico, Canada, England, Australia, Japan and South Korea feature women. Granted, Queen Elizabeth II is several of them, but country’s whose bills include her also have other women on them. Canada’s $100 note has a nameless female scientist looking through a microscope. In the United Kingdom, social reformer Elizabeth Fry appears on the £5 note, and author Jane Austen will appear on an upcoming £10 note.

Those examples contain a second lesson for Americans, too. The people on currency don’t need to be politicians. Authors, scientists, artists and social reformers all leave enduring marks on a country.

Women on the 20s, the organization advocating change here, has narrowed a list of 30 candidate women down to 15, and it continues to winnow. There are some strong contenders, including civil rights icon Rosa Parks, American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, escaped slave and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman and women’s suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

A couple of the other names are easier to drop. Susan B. Anthony qualifies on merit, but she already appeared on a now-discontinued dollar coin. Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, and conservatives would never find her politically palatable. It’s best not to bring abortion and contraception into it right out of the gate.

If there is any shortcoming to this proposal, it is that it doesn’t go far enough.

America ought to reconsider all of its currency. The current banknote pantheon was established in 1929. Back then, Jim Crow laws discriminated against blacks, and women had had the right to vote for less than a decade. It’s a safe guess that women, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and others did not receive much consideration.

Jackson, Franklin, Hamilton, George Washington ($1), Thomas Jefferson ($2), Abraham Lincoln ($5) and Ulysses S. Grant ($50) each made a mark on American history, but they hardly represent the full diversity of American achievement.