Araminta Ross was born to enslaved parents in Maryland sometime around 1820. At 5 or 6, an age when a girl should be starting her formal education, Ross began working as a house servant. On the cusp of becoming a teenager, she was sent to work in the fields. She married a free black man while in her 20s and eventually took his last name; she later changed her first name to honor her mother. For too long, her life was not her own.
By 1849, she had had enough. With her eyes fixed on the North Star, she broke free. In that moment, she became Harriet Tubman.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury announced that Tubman, who as a “conductor” for the Underground Railroad made 19 trips to the South to rescue hundreds of slaves, would become the new face of the $20 bill. Andrew Jackson, the old slave owner and seventh U.S. president who currently holds that spot, will be relegated to the back of the bill. The gesture does next to nothing to undo America’s great shame, but the karmic justice is undeniable.
The announcement was a personal victory, too, for New Hampshire’s senior senator, Jeanne Shaheen, who was the driving force behind the Women on the Twenty Act and the Harriet Tubman Currency Tribute Act. In a statement, Shaheen said she was thrilled that “the many voices across the country calling for a woman to be prominently featured on our currency were heard.” Of the voices urging the change, Shaheen’s was among the loudest and clearest, and all of New Hampshire should take pride in her efforts.
We also agree with Shaheen’s concerns regarding the potential for federal foot-dragging, especially with CNN reporting over the weekend that the new bills wouldn’t be issued until 2030. Even though a Treasury official called that report “baseless,” according to the Washington Post, the prospect of an overly long design and roll-out process is disconcerting. Women and African-Americans have certainly waited long enough for representation on U.S. currency.
Shaheen said she will urge Treasury officials to “look at every possible option to expedite the release date of this new bill,” and we trust she will keep the pressure on until the very first Tubman 20s begin to circulate.
The Treasury’s announcement also arrived as good news for fans of Alexander Hamilton, who may be in the midst of his best posthumous year yet. Not only is he the eponymous star of a wildly popular Pulitzer Prize-winning play, he will now remain the face of the American sawbuck – and at the expense of the decidedly less beloved Jackson. That’s as it should be.
But Wednesday belonged to former slave Araminta Ross, who deserves to honored as one of America’s true national heroes. Fellow abolitionist Frederick Douglass once wrote in a letter to Tubman: “I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you.”
And now, at long last, America is about to get to know Tubman a little better. Bank on it.