The Treasury Department is putting a woman on the $10 bill, starting in 2020
Andrew Jackson, you're safe for now.
For several months, the Women on $20s organization has been calling for a notable woman to replace the seventh president on the $20 bill, with voters choosing abolitionist Harriet Tubman as the ideal candidate. Instead of changing the $20, however, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday that a woman will actually appear on the redesigned $10 bill by 2020. "Our democracy is a work in progress," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said during a press conference. "The decision of putting a woman on the $10 bill reflects our aspirations for the future as much as a reflection of the past."
The change is a 2-for-1 deal: Not only does it celebrate the 100th anniversary of the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote, but it also redesigns a bill that can be easily counterfeited. The public will be able to vote for Alexander Hamilton's replacement by visiting this website or tweeting suggestions using #theNew10 (keep in mind it's illegal to have a living person on U.S. currency, so Beyoncé is out), and Lew said the new $10 will be the first in an entirely new series of paper currency designed around the theme of democracy and what it's like to be an American. There's no need to weep for Hamilton, either: Bills with the first U.S. secretary of the treasury's face on them will remain in circulation, and he'll still appear on an unspecified proportion of new $10s.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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