BROOKLYN ARTIST STAMPS TUBMAN ON $20 BILLS

Dena Cooper, a freelance illustrator living in Bay Ridge, has begun stamping hundreds of $20 dollar bills with the face of the famous abolitionist and prominent “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. Her design incorporates the facial features of the bill's current occupant, President Andrew Jackson, into Tubman's image — and it doesn't change the way the bills can be spent.

Cooper estimates that roughly 350 bills with Tubman's face on it are in circulation around New York, Virginia, Michigan and California. Her brother-in-law gave her $2,000 worth of $20 bills to be stamped. “It's gotten much bigger than I thought it would,” she said.

Cooper said she hopes to set up a booth where people can bring their own bills to be stamped. “I definitely hope that women are emboldened and empowered by a woman's presence on our U.S. currency — but more than that, women of color,” she said. “Although I'm not a woman of color, I see that in this feminist movement that's become so commercial … women of color are lost in those messages. Some of the strongest women who have been through the hardest of circumstances are women of color, and they deserve a platform just as much as any woman.”

The $20 bill featuring Tubman was slated to be released this year — the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote — but was postponed in May by President Trump's treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin.

The legality surrounding stamping bills is somewhat of a gray area. It is illegal to deface currency, but the Bureau of Engraving and Printing defines that as someone who “cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together” banknotes “with intent to render such items unfit to be reissued.” It is also illegal to advertise on money.

Susan Ades Stone, executive director of Women on 20s, a nonprofit grassroots organization with its own stamp, said that what Cooper did is perfectly legal. The bills will remain in circulation, she said, so long as the two round seals, serial number and any metallic ink are not stamped over.

To read the complete article, see:
In Brooklyn, Harriet Tubman is already on $20 bills (https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/01/08/in-brooklyn-harriet-tubman-is-already-on-20-bills/)

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