NEW YORK — Forget about Andrew Jackson and his big hair. It’s time we put a woman on the $20 bill.
So says an organization called Women on 20s, which is trying to convince President Obama and Congress to replace the controversial seventh president with a woman.
The group, which also calls itself W20, lists 15 candidates to replace Jackson. They include Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rachel Carson, Margaret Sanger and Susan B. Anthony.
Anthony used to adorn the dollar coin, which now bears the image of Sacagawea. But there are still no women on paper currency.
W20 is petitioning the president and Congress to put one of these women on the $20 bill by 2020, the 100th anniversary off the ratification of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Anthony, an abolitionist and suffragist, campaigned for the passage of that amendment.
W20 is inviting people to vote on its web site for their favorite candidates to grace the $20 bill.
A vote for Tubman — a key player in the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape from the antebellum South to the North — would be a stark contrast to Jackson, who owned a slave plantation in Nashville.
A fervent believer in Manifest Destiny, Jackson is also infamous for having supported the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the forced removal of Native tribes from the Eastern states to Oklahoma.
“Commonly known as the Trail of Tears, the mass relocation of Indians resulted in the deaths of thousands from exposure, disease and starvation during the westward migration,” said W20. “Not okay.”
The Bank of England did something like this in 2013, when it replaced Charles Darwin on the £10 note to make way for Jane Austen.
