The U. S. Treasury recently announced that a woman’s visage will appear on what the department calls The New 10 dollar bill and plans to makes its selection by the end of the year. In May, the advocacy group Women on 20 held an online poll to identify fitting candidates to replace Andrew Jackson’s mug on the $20 bill and announced that Harriet Tubman received the most votes.
There is a newfound groundswell of interest in Tubman, partly due to the federal government’s 2014 designation of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in upstate New York and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Also, the State of Maryland is building a new visitors center at a new state park created in her honor, which is set to open next year.
Many Americans know that Tubman put her own life at risk to free about 60 people along the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Few realize, however, that she lived for 50 years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and continued to fight for women’s rights, temperance and better treatment for the poor, the sick and the elderly.
Read more about Harriet Tubman’s history here.
Photo credit Wikimedia
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