WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that women will be incorporated into new designs for the $5, $10 and $20 bills. Here is a look at the new lineup.
Front of the $20 Bill:
Harriet Tubman
Araminta
Ross, known as “Minty,” was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland around 1822. When she was about 26, and married to John Tubman,
she escaped to Philadelphia and took her mother’s given name, Harriet.
She later returned to rescue family members, and was asked by slaves not
related to her to help them escape as well. She took great risks
traveling at night from the South to the free North via a network of
secret routes and safe houses on the Underground Railroad. When the
Civil War began, Tubman became a spy for the Union.
_____
Back of the $10 Bill:
Susan B. Anthony
Susan
B. Anthony was born in 1820 to a Quaker family in Massachusetts and
became an antislavery activist as a teenager. With Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, she founded and led several women’s groups and suffrage
organizations and played a central role in pressing for what would
become the 19th Amendment granting women’s suffrage. In 1872 she was
arrested on charges of voting in her hometown, Rochester, convicted and
ordered to pay a fine. Six years later, she and Stanton presented
Congress with an amendment giving women the right to vote. She died in
1906, 14 years before it was ratified.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, born in 1815, was a pioneer of the women’s rights
movement who played a central role in the drive for women’s suffrage. In
1848 at Seneca Falls, N.Y, she presented the “Declaration of
Sentiments” that echoed the language of the Declaration of Independence.
But Stanton’s version, signed by 68 women and 32 men, denounced the
“long train of abuses” inflicted by men on women. “Such has been the
patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which
they are entitled,” Stanton wrote.
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia
Coffin Mott, born in 1793, was a Quaker who devoted herself to
abolitionist and women’s causes. She played a key role in organizing the
Seneca Falls convention and producing the “Declaration of Sentiments”
that called for women’s equality. But she was stunned by Stanton’s call
at the convention for women to be allowed to vote. “Oh Lizzie, if thee
demands that, thee will make us ridiculous!” Mott protested. But she
remained a central player in both the antislavery and women’s suffrage
movement.
Alice Paul
Alice
Paul, a Quaker born in 1885 who was taken to women’s suffrage meetings
as a teenager, founded the National Women’s Party in 1916. She organized
protests for suffrage in front of the White House, many of them
resulting in beatings by the police. The effort led to the 19th
Amendment. Paul, who had a Ph.D. in economics from the University of
Pennsylvania, established a headquarters for the Women’s Party in a
house near the Capitol, which President Obama has designated as the
Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. Mr. Obama has called
her “a brilliant community organizer and political strategist.’’
Sojourner Truth
Isabella
Baumfree — a Dutch-speaking slave born in 1797 in rural New York —
changed her name to Sojourner Truth after she walked off an upstate farm
in 1826 with her infant daughter. She became a Christian preacher and
grew increasingly political in pressing for abolition, women’s suffrage
and prison reform. She delivered her most famous address, “Ain’t I a
Woman,’’ in 1851 in Ohio, where she said: “I could work as much and eat
as much as a man — when I could get it — and bear the lash as well. And
ain’t I a woman?’’
_____
Back of the $5 Bill:
Marian Anderson
Marian
Anderson, a coal seller’s daughter, was born in 1897 and had become one
of the world’s most accomplished contraltos by 1939, the year the
Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at
Constitution Hall because of a “white artists only” clause in its
contracts. Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady, resigned from the D.A.R.
in protest and encouraged the Interior Department to find a place for
Ms. Anderson to perform. The result was an Easter concert at the Lincoln
Memorial that drew 75,000 people, with millions more tuning in on the
radio.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor
Roosevelt, born in New York City in 1884, was the first lady from 1933
to 1945 and redefined the role. Shortly after arriving at the White
House, she held the first news conference by a president’s wife and
continually surprised the country with her outspokenness and activism.
After the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, she was
named a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She traveled
the world as a human rights advocate, lecturer and writer until her
death in 1962. Her intervention on behalf of Marian Anderson remains
among her best-known moments.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The
1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was not the first time
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. uttered the now-famous phrase: “I
Have a Dream.” He had said it before in speeches in Detroit and North
Carolina, but it did not become a national refrain until the day the
Baptist preacher, who became the voice of the civil rights movement,
used it before 250,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The
phrase was part of a broader speech about racial justice and equality,
but the four words has endured as one of the most powerful, pivotal
moments in American history.
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