Harriet Tubman Will Replace Andrew Jackson On $20 Bill

Updated at 4:05 p.m.

Maryland native and famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman – who helped guide slaves to freedom in the 1800s – will become the new face of the $20 bill, replacing President Andrew Jackson.

Tubman is the first woman to be featured on United States print money.

In her later years, Tubman said, “I would fight for liberty so long as my strength lasted.”

After the war, she supported the cause of women’s suffrage and was active in suffragist organizations. She died in 1913 and was buried with military honors.

The U.S. Treasury made the worst-kept secret in Washington official via Twitter late Wednesday afternoon.

Tubman was one of the finalists in a 2015 campaign to put the face of a woman on the $20 bill by the group Women On 20s.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced his decision to retain Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, the agency said, and put five leaders of the movement to give women the right to vote on the back of the bill. The department shared details on what to look for on the redesigned $5, $10 and $20 bills.

Former President Andrew Jackson, a slave-holder, will lose his spot on the front of the $20 bill, to be replaced by Tubman. The back of the bill will depict the White House and an image of President Jackson.

There will also be changes to the $5 bill to depict civil rights era leaders.

The new $5 will still feature President Abraham Lincoln on the front, and honor historic events at the Lincoln Memorial on the back.

The final designs for the revamped currency will be unveiled in 2020, reports The New York Times, which marks the 100-year anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Circulation of the new bills will be later in the decade, starting with the new $10 bill.

Last year, it seemed likely that Hamilton would be replaced on the $10 bill by Tubman, but the writer and star of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” Lin Manuel Miranda, lobbied against that change.

He – and his many fans – spoke up in support of Hamilton as the first Secretary of Treasury and the creator of the Bank of America.

Tubman was born a slave about 1822 in Dorchester County, MD, who used the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in the North in 1849, and then helped others gain their freedom. She also actively spied against the Confederacy during the Civil War.

The four finalists to break the paper currency barrier were Tubman; Rosa Parks, Civil Rights activist; human rights advocate and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and Cherokee nation chief Wilma Mankiller.

They were selected from 15 semi-finalists in grassroots voting sponsored by the group trying to convince the U.S. Treasury Department to replace the face of Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, on the $20 bill.

In preliminary rounds of voting, Roosevelt was the leader. But in the final tally among the four women, Tubman received 118,328 votes, while Roosevelt was second with 111,227 ballots. Parks came in third with 67,173 votes, and Mankiller garnered 58,703 votes.

The $20 bill was selected because 2020 is the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote.

“There are so few reminders in our everyday lives of great women who’ve contributed to the shaping of our nation,” said Susan Ades Stone, executive director of Women on 20s. “It’s time to correct that and putting a woman on a $20 is like having a little pocket monument.”

The group’s slogan is “A Woman’s Place is On the Money.”

Legislation to put a woman’s image on the $20 bill have been introduced in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the group says.

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»Screenshot from Women on 20s website; portrait of Harriet Tubman: Ohio History Connection, dated circa 1887 by H.G. Smith, Studio Building, Boston.