Minutes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that he was delaying the new Harriet Tubman $20 bill until 2028, a New York designer tweeted:
Minutes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that he was delaying the new Harriet Tubman $20 bill until 2028, a New York designer tweeted: « We’ll see about that. »
Dano Wall, 33, has created a 3-D stamp that can be used to superimpose a portrait of Tubman over Andrew Jackson’s on $20 bills. Wall said he has sold out of the stamps and is hurrying to produce more.
« My goal is to get 5,000 stamps out there, » said Wall. « If there are 5,000 people consistently stamping currency, we could get a significant percent of circulating $20 bills [with the Tubman] stamp, at which point it would be impossible to ignore. »
Wall began manufacturing the stamps in 2017, soon after President Donald Trump took office, and Mnuchin refused to commit to the Obama administration’s plan to put Tubman on the $20 bill.
Jackson, the nation’s seventh commander in chief, was a slave owner. Tubman, who escaped slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, helped lead hundreds of people to freedom along the Underground Railroad.
Wall has been stamping as many $20s as he can and encouraging others to do the same.
« Putting Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill would have constituted a monumental symbolic change, disrupting the pattern of white men who appear on our bills, » he said, « and, by putting her on the most popular note currently in circulation, indicates exactly what kind of a life we choose to celebrate; what values we, as a country, most hope to emulate. Harriet Tubman’s unparalleled grit, intelligence, and bravery over the course of her long life certainly make her worthy of such an honor. «
Last month Trump described the redesign of the $20 bill with Tubman’s image as « pure political correctness » and suggested she could be added to the $2 bill instead.
