MNUCHIN MAY RECONSIDER HARRIET TUBMAN $20 BILL

Wait a minute on that plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.

The Trump administration is reconsidering an Obama-era initiative to make U.S. Mint history by replacing Andrew Jackson with the 19th-century American abolitionist as the face of the $20 bill, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC on Thursday.

"Ultimately we will be looking at this issue," he said. "It's not something I'm focused on at the moment."

His comment triggered instant ire on social media from the plan's supporters...

After nearly a year of debate, former Treasury secretary Jack Lew announced in April last year that Tubman will be placed on the front of the $20 bill while Jackson gets reassigned to the rear.

The decision was part of the department's broader efforts to redesign the $10, $20 and $5 bills and place female historical figures on the notes.

The new $20 bill and other redesigned notes were scheduled to be issued in 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

To read the complete article, see:
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin just put Harriet Tubman's role on $20 bill in question (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/08/31/treasury-secretary-steve-mnuchin-just-put-harriet-tubmans-role-20-bill-question/621103001/)

In April 2016, then-Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced that Jackson would move to the back of the $20 bill. He also said that images of women would be added to the back of the $5 and $10 bills.

Mr. Lew said final designs would be unveiled in 2020, with production starting later in the decade. The government regularly redesigns paper currency to frustrate counterfeiters, but the people honored on the bills have remained the same for nearly a century. Other nations, notably Britain, regularly rotate honorees, though Queen Elizabeth II remains on all the bills.

Mr. Lew was aware when he made the decision to redesign the currency that its fate would rest with Mr. Obama’s successor. But he said then that he doubted it would be reversed.

“I don’t think somebody’s going to probably want to do that — to take the image of Harriet Tubman off of our money? To take the image of the suffragists off?” he said.

Treasury had earlier removed its “Modern Money” website that the Obama administration created to highlight its plans for the redesigned bills.

Harriet Tubman was born enslaved, escaped to freedom and then returned repeatedly to the part of Maryland where she grew up to lead other slaves to freedom. She served as a Union scout during the Civil War and later become a prominent advocate for giving women the right to vote.

To read the complete article, see:
Mnuchin Doesn’t Endorse Placing Harriet Tubman on the New $20 Bill (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/us/politics/mnuchin-harriet-tubman-jackson-money.html)

The decision was seen as a watershed moment in American history. “The fact that women’s history is being included and honored on American banknotes is a huge shift, a huge moment,” Ellen Feingold, curator of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, told Newsweek at the time. Real-life women last appeared on banknotes a century ago, and no African-American ever appeared on U.S. federal currency. (Confederate states did portray African-Americans, but only as slaves.)

Trump, who has shown admiration for Jackson by hanging his portrait in the Oval Office, did not agree with the move, which he dubbed “pure political correctness.”

To read the complete article, see:
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WANTS ONLY DEAD WHITE MEN ON U.S. BANKNOTES, BUT AMERICANS DISAGREE (http://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-wants-only-dead-white-men-us-banknotes-americans-disagree-658414)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
CHANGES TO U.S. PAPER MONEY PORTRAITURE (http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n17a18.html)

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