”The U.S. Treasury hasn’t changed the faces on the bills since 1929, when
Andrew Jackson elbowed out Grover Cleveland on the $20. Why, you may be
asking yourself, did they pick Jackson? And why was Grover Cleveland there to begin with? Nobody seems to know.”
“”Women on 20s” picked Jackson to depose mainly because of his horrific history with Native Americans, although there’s also the rather blissful note that
Jackson disapproved of paper currency.“
“The Native American issue looms large when it comes to replacing Jackson,
who sent the Cherokee Nation on the Trail of Tears. Lately, [Women on 20s] have decided that when they announce their three top
vote-getters and ask people to pick a winner, they’re going to add a
fourth option: Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee
Nation. (“People felt it would be poetic justice.”)
If
I could add a nominee it might be Angelina Grimke, the great
abolitionist orator. Or Sybil Ludington, who rode through New York one
night in 1777 warning her countrymen the British were coming. (Just like
Paul Revere, except Sybil was 16, and rode twice as far.) Or Margaret
Brent, who used her business acumen to save the colony of Maryland from
being destroyed by mercenary soldiers in 1647.
Or
maybe Elizabeth Jennings, the black New Yorker who sued the trolley
company that tossed her off a whites-only car in 1854 — a court action
that led to the desegregation of mass transit in the city 100 years
before Rosa Parks.
But then, of course, you don’t want to pass up Rosa Parks. There are thousands of possibilities. Nominate among yourselves.“