Today is International Women's Day—on women and our money

By Steven Otto

Today is International Women's Day and for a theme, this year, I have decided to write about our nations lack of women and other minorities on our currency. To date there have been a few women on our coins. But there have been no women on our paper money.

A $1 coin.

Early in our history the US had what we called "Liberty heads" or simply "Liberty" or "Liberty Seated" figures on many of our coins.

They were images of women, but not specific women. That is not much different from all the so called "Indian Head" (supposedly Native American Indian) coins that were minted. Most of those, such as the Indian head 1¢ and the ten dollar gold piece, were not even real Indians. They were liberty headed coins with women wearing Indian bonnets.

When they finally did mint a real Indian on the coin, the nickle five ¢ piece, it was a generic Indian with no real name and no real history.

 

As for our paper money, women have been lacking and they still are.

 

So finally after all these years, the mint came out with the Susan B. Anthony Dollar, 1979. It was a nice coin with a nice design, however, it was just a little larger than a quarter dollar coin. They were easy to get mixed up. So that coin faded away with its unpopularity. That is not to say there are none of them around. There are millions still stock piled at the mint. That makes the coin valueless to a collector.

 

That brings us to the Sacagawea dollar, minted first minted in 2000. It was as different color than the old dollar coin—brass or gold color. While it was popular with some people, as myself, it was not popular enough to become regularly used money. It seems many people just won't handle a dollar coin if they can avoid it. The coin is a nice shape and it has many advantages over the dollar bill, such as lasting a lot longer. But people still won't spend it. This coin had a specific woman and that woman was a Native American Indian. So it was not only a step forward for women, but for minorities as well. As late as 2019 a few of these coins were still being minted for collectors.

That brings us to the Harriet Tubman $20. A few years ago there was a plan to mint $20 bills with Tubman, both a woman and a minority (black), on it. After Andrew Jackson, who is now on the $20 was a racist towards Indians. A black woman is long overdue to be put on our money. It is bad enough we haven't been able to get a woman elected president. We just now have a vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is both a minority and a woman.

Just recently President Joe Biden restarted the effort to put Tubman on the $20. According to Govexec:

"The White House will resume the Obama-era push to put Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. 

“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes,” Psaki said in response to a reporter’s question during the daily briefing. “It’s important that our … money reflects the history and diversity of our country and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that.” 

Naturally there are those fools and non-progressives who still want to drag their feet and stop this effort. According to Time:

"The Biden Administration announced its plan to return to an Obama-era initiative to put Harriet Tubman’s face on the U.S. $20 bill. Her image would replace Andrew Jackson, the notoriously racist President, known both for owning hundreds of slaves and for his brutal and genocidal policy of Indian removal. Based on current designs, a statue of Jackson would remain on the back of the bill, while Harriet Tubman would grace the front. Many Americans, across the racial spectrum, are excited about this tribute to Tubman. They view it as progress, as a necessary and long overdue disruption of the American Founding Fathers narrative. I do not.

I know in a country that worships at the altar of capitalism–an economic system made possible by the free Black labor procured through the Transatlantic slave trade–a Black woman’s face on our currency seems like the highest honor we could bestow. But what a stunning failure of imagination. Putting Tubman on legal tender, when slaves in the U.S. were treated as fungible commodities is a supreme form of disrespect. The imagery of her face changing hands as people exchange cash for goods and services evokes for me discomfiting scenes of enslaved persons being handed over as payment for white debt or for anything white slaveholders wanted. America certainly owes a debt to Black people, but this is not the way to repay it.

Our country to the South, Mexico, has had us beat for years on both women and Native American Indians. On their five centavo they have María Josefa Crescencia Ortíz Téllez–Girón, popularly known as Doña Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez or La Corregidora was an insurgent and supporter of the Mexican War of Independence, which fought for independence against Spain, in the early 19th century. And on the Mexican five peso coin they have had Cuauhtemoc, the Aztec warrior—a specific Native American Indian.

So let's support the effort, once again, to put a woman on our money.

And in the mean time, here are some nice quotes from important women.

 (The author, Steve Otto, has been a coin collector for nearly his entire adult life and then some.)

Here are a few relevant quotes:

Break the Chains

Unleash the fury of women

As a mighty force for revolution -Jiang Qing/江青

 

Women are the real architects of society. - Cher

Always be a first-rate version of yourself instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. -Judy Garland

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.- Maya Angelou

I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me. And aren't I a woman?...

 

.....That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

- Sojourner Truth

 

And a Song:

Aretha Franklin - Respect