US $20 bill to feature black female abolitionist

By Kasim Ileri

WASHINGTON

A portrait of a black female abolitionist who helped slaves escape to freedom will be featured on the front of the new $20 bill, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s announcement that would replace pro-slavery President Andrew Jackson came in a letter to Americans in which he highlighted some of the changes to the $20, $10 and $5 notes.

“After more than 100 years, we cannot delay, so the next bill to be redesigned must include women, who for too long have been absent from our currency,” he said.

The reverse of the $20 will continue to feature the White House with an image of Jackson.

The back side of new $10 notes will feature an image of the historic march for suffrage, a key women’s rights movement that emerged in the mid 1800s that ended at the steps of the Treasury Department.

The design of the $10 notes will “honor the leaders of the suffrage movement Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul,” he said.

Retained on the front will be a portrait of Alexander Hamilton -- one of the U.S.'s Founding Fathers and a top aide to first President George Washington.

Lew said the reverse of the $5 note will feature the Lincoln Memorial “to honor events” there, including a performance by world-renowned Opera singer Marian Anderson in 1939 -- considered an iconic moment in the civil rights struggle -- and civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

The front of the bill will continue to feature President Abraham Lincoln.