Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony had their chances, but they only got as far as the $1 coins.
Now there’s a movement brewing called “Women on 20s” that intends to petition President Obama to replace the familiar face of former President Andrew Jackson on the US $20 bill with the visage of a woman who has never been president. The group posted a clip on their YouTube page of Barack Obama saying in a speech that he thought putting a woman on our currency “was a pretty good idea.” The group’s intent is to achieve this goal by the year of 2020 because…twenty and twenty. Get it? Twenty! Symbolic historicalness, everyone. 2020 is also the same year that marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote.
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is on board with this idea. This week, she put forth legislation that would direct the US Treasury to appoint a citizens panel to look into the idea and recommend an appropriate female candidate. The finalists, chosen by an online poll on the Women on 20s website, are Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and…Wilma Mankiller.
Nothing against Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation who passed away in 2010, but I don’t recall ever hearing of her until now. She hadn’t gotten the top votes in the online poll, but Wo20 made sure to promote her to final four status anyway. The name itself making it onto the list of final names by the Women on 20s group shouldn’t be surprising. Not only would Mankiller’s name and face on the twenty serve as a consolation prize for Native Americans as a way of making amends for the deaths of Cherokees after Jackson’s signing of the Indian Removal Act, but it would also be a win for feminists who would drool over having someone named “Mankiller” on the front of common American currency. Yet there would be no small irony in using a Mankiller twenty-spot to purchase the latest issue of Playboy or a 12-pack of BIC lady shavers.
As I mentioned, an online poll determined these four finalists. Did you vote? Did you know this poll existed? Shouldn’t we all have a say in this? Who made this Women on 20s group an authority on whose likeness belongs on our currency? If switching the face on the $20 bill is going to happen, surely there are other candidates to take into consideration. Other men, perhaps. Or other women. But putting a woman on a twenty dollar bill just for the sake of putting a woman on a twenty dollar bill is elevating someone to a higher status simply because of their gender, placing that person above others who have had a greater impact on America.
This “Women on 20” movement is likely something we’ll be hearing about more in the future. So step aside, slave-owning, Native American-genociding President Number Seven. You soon may be replaced by a chick.
