Time for Women on US Paper Money?

Obama says it's a 'pretty good idea'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 31, 2014 4:03 AM CDT
Time for Women on US Paper Money?
Andrew Jackson's time on the $20 may be drawing to a close.   (Wikipedia)

The days of American paper money being an all-boys club could be numbered. President Obama said yesterday that he had received a letter from a young girl wondering why there were no women on US bills, "and then she gave me a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff, which I thought was a pretty good idea," reports the Hill, which notes that while women including Susan B. Anthony and Native American guide Sacagawea have appeared on coins, the only woman to have made it onto paper money is Martha Washington, who was on dollar silver certificates in the 1880s.

But who would go on the bills—and who would they replace? George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin can probably rest easy, but Jillian Keenan at Slate made a good case earlier this year for booting Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill for his support of slavery and "ethnic cleansing" of Native Americans—and because he was "a fierce opponent of paper money and the central banking system." Vox suggests contenders including Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Ida Wells. New York magazine has mocked up $20s with some of those choices, as well as ones featuring Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Kim Kardashian. (More Andrew Jackson stories.)

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