It’s been a long time since we’ve revisited the topic of placing famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
That’s because all talks – which started in 2016 with President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew proposing the idea – fell by the wayside after Trump came into office.
As WKRN reports, President Trump is a fan of Andrew Jackson, who owned enslaved Black people and supported policies which led to the forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral homes. As for the current Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, he said that Jackson is to remain on the $20 bill.
But some legislators in Congress aren’t letting go of the plan.
“We don’t have a woman of color, we don’t have any person of color on any U.S. currency,” Rep. John Katko (R-NY) told the news station.
“It should not even be an issue, in my mind,” he added. “When the Trump administration came in it fell by the wayside.”
Katko has introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act of 2019, a bill that would require the Treasury Department to place Tubman on the $20 by 2020.
The bill has support from Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate, according to the news station.