April 21--Nearly two years ago, a young girl named Sofia from Cambridge, Mass., wrote President Barack Obama a letter. In it, she asked him a simple question: Why aren't there any women on our currency?
On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery and became a well-known abolitionist and leader of the Underground Railroad, will replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill.
The hitch is that Jackson will remain on the back of the bill. He's a controversial president at best. On one hand, Jackson was a war hero and one of the nation's first true populist leaders. He's considered the founder of the modern-day Democratic Party.
But he was also a slave owner and a ruthless general. He led a cruel campaign against Native Americans, forcing them out of their homes and across the country. Political patronage -- something we know well in Illinois -- was a hallmark of his time in office.
It seems like an insult to make Tubman and Jackson share a bill. She fought against much of what he stood for. And she certainly deserves her own legal tender -- perhaps something not now in circulation, such as a $25 bill.
At the same time, this two-faced bill represents the dichotomy that is America, the land of the free and the not-so-free. The good and the bad. Striking Jackson completely from the $20 bill would mean running from our sometimes heroic, sometimes flawed history. We tell the full spectrum of our story by adding, rather than subtracting. Our current conversations about race and gender should carry the full weight of where we've been and where we're going.
So Harriet Tubman gets the front of the $20, where she belongs. Andrew Jackson gets the back, which is fine.
And little Sofia gets her wish.
