As an economist, I have spent
much of my life thinking about what money
does. It measures value. It facilitates
exchange. It stores wealth. But money also
tells a story. Every portrait placed on a
bill announces whom this nation has chosen
to honor - and whose history it expects us
to carry in our pockets.
Ten years ago, the Treasury
Department announced that Harriet Tubman
would replace Andrew Jackson on the front
of the $20 bill. That plan has been
delayed again and again. Now, while Tubman
continues to wait, supporters of Donald
Trump are promoting a new $250 bill
bearing his likeness, even though Congress
has not authorized the denomination and
current law prohibits living people from
appearing on American currency.
The contrast could hardly be more
offensive.
Harriet Tubman was born enslaved
and escaped to freedom, then repeatedly
risked her life to return south and lead
others out of bondage. She served the
Union as a nurse, scout and spy. In 1863,
she helped lead the Combahee River Raid,
which liberated hundreds of enslaved
people. Later, she advocated for women’s
suffrage. She gave her life to the
proposition that freedom was worth
fighting for, even when the fight brought
her neither wealth nor comfort.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, is a
billionaire president who has repeatedly
blurred the line between public power and
private enrichment. He has put his name on
buildings, products and public
institutions. Now his image is being
proposed for a denomination created to
commemorate the nation’s 250th
anniversary.
This is more than vanity. It is
the currency of oligarchy.
Oligarchy is what happens when
wealth buys political power, political
power protects and multiplies wealth, and
public institutions are bent toward the
glorification of people who already
possess both. In a democracy, money is a
public instrument. In an oligarchy, even
public money becomes another surface on
which the ruler may write his own name.
The Tubman $20 would tell a
different story.
A $20 bill is not a rare
commemorative object locked in a
collector’s case. It is ordinary money. It
passes across grocery counters and
restaurant tables. It is slipped into
church collection plates and handed to
grandchildren. It pays for haircuts,
prescriptions, school supplies and rides
home. It is folded into a child’s birthday
card by an auntie who wants the child to
have “a little something.”
Imagine Harriet Tubman making
those journeys.
Imagine a child opening that
birthday card and asking who the woman on
the bill is. Imagine generations of
Americans encountering Tubman not only
during Black History Month, but every day
- at the ATM, the corner store and the
kitchen table.
That is why representation on
currency matters. It is history placed
into circulation.
Andrew Jackson, whose portrait
remains on the $20 bill, was an enslaver
whose policies drove Native people from
their lands. Tubman, who liberated
enslaved people and served this nation,
was supposed to take his place on the
front. Earlier plans even retained Jackson
on the reverse. Yet even that modest
adjustment to our national memory has
proved too much for those determined to
preserve the old racial hierarchy.
Tubman was not merely an
inspirational figure. She challenged an
economic system. Enslavement was not only
racial terrorism; it was coerced labor
that created enormous wealth for white
people while treating Black people as
property. Each time Tubman led another
person to freedom, she stole labor away
from enslavers and disrupted the economics
of bondage.
That makes her especially
appropriate for American currency.
She also understood that freedom
without economic power is fragile. After
the Civil War, despite her service to the
Union, she struggled for years to receive
adequate compensation and a pension. The
nation benefited from her courage more
readily than it paid its debt to her.
That pattern is painfully
familiar. Black people build, serve,
sacrifice and create. The country applauds
us symbolically while withholding material
justice. Tubman is praised in speeches
while being kept off the money. Meanwhile,
a president who converts attention, office
and access into personal advantage may
receive a denomination manufactured for
his image.
The issue is not merely whether
one likes Donald Trump. It is a question
of ownership. Does American currency
belong to the American people? Does it
reflect a shared history, including the
people who expanded the boundaries of
freedom? Or is it another possession of a
president who treats public institutions
as extensions of his personal brand?
Harriet Tubman belongs on the $20
bill because she represents the best of
this nation - not the nation as it was,
but the nation generations have struggled
to make it become. She chose liberation
over submission, collective freedom over
personal safety and service over
self-enrichment.
Donald Trump does not need
another monument to himself. The man who
lives in the house that enslaved people
built has already had far too much access
to the nation’s power, attention and
money.
The last thing we need is his
face on it.
