A month ago, you may have read about an organization called Women On 20s, whose mission is to put a woman’s face on paper currency by 2020. More than 256,000 followers of the campaign voted to narrow the nominees down from 100 to four. They settled on Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Wilma Mankiller.
After another voting round, Harriet Tubman has emerged as the nominee that will be used to convince the Treasury Department to make history by better representing history.
For those who didn't pay attention in school or are from Mars, Tubman was considered the "Moses" of her time. Born into slavery, she managed to escape to the North and then proceeded to return to the South (19 TIMES!) to lead 300 others—including her siblings and parents—to freedom, using her knowledge of safe-houses. During the Civil War, she served as a cook, nurse, scout and spy for the Union. She even became the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military expedition, which involved destroying a Confederate supply depot and freeing more than 750 slaves.
Despite all of her heroism, the only compensation she received was in the form of a widow's pension of $8 per month. She had to petition Congress to get an increase that reflected her work as a nurse, which the government paid only in part. These issues of recognition make the idea of Tubman gracing the money she was so long denied that much sweeter.
