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Tubman takes twenty

Students react to Treasury

By Laura Fitzgerald, Senior Staff Writer

Harriet Tubman - a leading African American abolitionist who escorted hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad - will oust Andrew Jackson, America's seventh president, from the front of the $20 bill.

Jackson will reside on the back of the bill with the White House as the background. He is known for his championing of the common man and war time heroics, but also as a slaveholder who initiated the forced removal of thousands of Native Americans.

The U.S. Treasury is also making changes to lower denomination bills. Five women suffrage leaders will be depicted on the back of the $10 bill along with the treasury building. Three civil Rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr, will grace the back of the $5 bill along with the Lincoln Memorial.

The final designs of the bills will be unveiled in 2020, and the bills will reach wider circulation later in the decade.

Faculty and students expressed mixed emotions on the redesign of our nation's currency.

Alexis Thompson, a junior at Miami and member of Black Women Empowered, said placing Tubman on the bill doesn't create concrete change to improve the position of African Americans, it just puts a new face on a dollar bill.

"Seeing that the actual system behind our money is not changing, just the face is changing. That's not really making any actual change," Thompson said.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2013, 67 percent of white students enrolled immediately, compared to only 57 percent of African American students.

Thompson said that the redesign of our currency should be paired with education and discussion over the issues of race in America today.

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"So if we're not coupling this with education, we're not coupling this with conversation, then what are we doing?" Thompson said. "We're just making a statement, and not examining why."

Thompson said that while she does not want to devalue Tubman's accomplishments, there were many other influential African American leaders to choose from in American history.

"I think it's kind of a slap in the face to choose Harriet Tubman, seeing as she is only one of many different influential leaders that were pioneers on the Underground Railroad," Thompson said.

Jane Goettsch, director of the Women's Center, had mixed feelings on the currency change. She said that while it's important that these women have recognition on something as important as our currency, there is still more work to be done in the area of women's rights.

"It's more complicated than that. It's not a simple yay, rejoice because there is so much more work to do," Goettsch said.

One area that women still face discrimination is the gender wage gap, Goettsch said. According to the American Association of University Women, for every dollar a white men make, white women earn 78 cents, and black women earn 64 cents.

Goettsch said that those women--Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and the five suffragettes--are good representations of the struggles of Civil Rights leaders and women, although there are many more figures that could have represented women and people of color.

There are still other ethnicities that are missing on our currency, such as Native Americans, Goettsch said.

"I think they're good, but you always have to ask the question, who's missing?" Goettsch said.

However, Goettsch said women are finally receiving the recognition in their place in American history.

"I think it does reflect a greater recognition that women have played significant and extraordinary roles in the history of our country that for way too long have been missing," Goettsch said.

Madison Simmons, sophomore public health and interactive media studies major and publicity chair of Feminists Working on Real Democracy (F-Word), said placing Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill is a step in the right direction because it increases the visibility of people of color in America.

However, to place Jackson on the back of the same bill is offensive because he was a slave owner and caused the deaths of thousands of Native Americans on the Trail of Tears.

"Somebody who killed so many people and oppressed so many people is still on our currency. Why are we commemorating him?" Simmons said.

Kimberly Hamlin, associate professor of history and GIC, said that we as a nation are still grappling with Jackson's legacy, and the policies that he enacted would outrage us today. Keeping him on the back of the bill with Harriet Tubman's legacy reminds us to keep those conversations on race, gender, and inequality alive.

"Putting valiant Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 shows who we want to think we are as a nation, while keeping Andrew Jackson on the back will remind us of what we have often been," Hamlin said.

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