Today, Explained - Change for a 20?

Episode Date: June 18, 2019

As Washington gears up for the 2020 elections, it's fighting over who should be on the $20 bill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I went home for the holidays last year, I couldn't believe how much the kids were into making slime. There were little slime factories on top of all the slime they were already exuding. Anyway, one of the KiwiCo crates also helps the kids make slime, but teaches them all about what they're making as they go. KiwiCo is offering today Explained listeners the chance to try them for free. To redeem the offer and learn more about their projects for kids of all ages, visit KiwiCo.com slash explained. You know what might become a hot button issue in 2020?

The 20. Like the 20 you've got in your back pocket right now or your purse right now. The one with Andrew Jackson on one side and I don't know, let me see who's on the other side. It's got, oh, it looks like the White House on the other side. You might know it well. Comes out of the ATM all the time. There's a fight over whose face gets to be on the 20 right now.

And this wasn't supposed to be a fight. This was supposed to be settled. The brand new $20 bill was supposed to be ready to go in 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage. And the new face of the 20 was supposed to be Harriet Tubman. This idea came up back in 2015. Alan Rappaport covers economic policy for The New York Times. There was an Obama administration's Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, wanted to overhaul the currencies,

add women to the currencies, add historical figures. We went through a process of listening, and I kind of did it the old-fashioned way. We actually listened. And they started a whole sort of process where there was a petition, there were online polls,

they were getting feedback from around the country. Heard from well over a million people in one way or another, you know, responses through handwritten notes and emails and tweets and retweets. And the amount of support and interest in Harriet Tubman was quite impressive. You know, former slave and abolitionist, to put her as the new face of the 20, And the plan was that they would move Andrew Jackson to the back of the 20, a smaller image of him, but to keep him on there in that capacity. Was the decision controversial at the time to put Harriet Tubman on the 20? It was. I mean, I think any changes to currencies, you know, big changes like that tend to be controversial. And we haven't seen new faces new faces on the currency since I think 1928 was the last time this came up. In the heat of the presidential election, President Trump was asked

about it at the time. I don't like seeing it. Yes, I think it's pure political correctness. Even though he did offer some praise for Harriet Tubman, he suggested. I would love to leave Andrew Jackson and see if we can maybe come up with another denomination. Maybe we do the $2 bill or we do another bill. Once President Trump was elected, you know, there were kind of ongoing and lingering questions about how his administration would handle this initiative that had been set in motion by the Obama administration. So the issue basically sort of reemerged in recent months because members of Congress have been pressing the administration on what's going to happen with this because we're coming up to 2020. Secretary Mnuchin got asked

some questions early on in his tenure and sort of hedged and suggested that people have been on the bills for a long period of time. This is something we'll consider right now. We've got a lot more important issues to focus on, you know, sort of hinting that he was not really in favor of it. There were some other signs of that. The Treasury website had been overhauled and there was no trace of the Tubman 20 on there anymore. It wasn't until May when the Treasury Secretary was asked about this during a congressional hearing that he said, you know, for the first time publicly that that timeline was no longer going to be met. As you know, 2020 is only one year away. And since Secretary Lew's departure, we have not heard anything regarding the status

of the currency redesign. Will the redesign meet the 2020 deadline? Yes or no? So let me comment that the primary reason we've looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues. He's said that this was actually going to be delayed until 2026, and he wouldn't commit to Harriet Tubman being on the bill. He's said that the priority should be on the security and the anti-counterfeiting measures. And basically, he's saying that, you know, it'll be left to another Treasury secretary in the future to decide who the new face of the $20 bill will be if there is a new face. The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary's down the road.

Does that mean you have no intention of executing the redesign as planned by your predecessor? Well, that is correct. I have not made a decision to execute on a redesign or haven't made a decision. You know, by pushing this off to 2026, it's actually, you know, beyond even the possibility of a second term of President Trump. What was the reaction to his announcement? Definitely a lot of backlash, especially from organizations and, you know, members of Congress who were very supportive of the idea of the Tubman 20. I mean, it definitely sort of brought this issue into the culture wars,

who should be on the currency. And I think there's a lot of strong feelings from all sides on this. How could you be remaking American history at this rate? It's incredible. Others feel ousting a past president who's done so much in the founding of our country is a unbelievable sign of disrespect. I grew up in an era in the time when we did not have civil rights. We recognize racism. I don't care how overt or how covert, we recognize it when we see it. And this is steeped in racism. And then, of course, last week, you and your colleagues broke this image of the bill. How did you get your hands on that? I mean, we got it from, I'm not going to say exactly how we got it, but we did get it from

a former treasury official. And, you know, it was produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And, you know, that's kind of all we can say about it. Can you describe the bill? Well, it's the image of the bill. So basically, it's a portrait of Harriet Tubman. She's wearing, you know, a black coat with a wide collar. You know, she's looking straight ahead with a, you know, a pretty stoic face. And one of the things in the design of these bills, if you talk to people who have worked at the engraving office, you know, it's important that you can sort of, from any angle, it looks like the eyes are following you and you get a

little bit of that there. And she has a pretty, you know, serene face. So it's pretty interesting to see it sort of in that context. You know, I used to be a bank teller and we were trained to look out for fake currency. And the first thing that I thought when I saw this image that was published in your story in The Times was that it looked fake. It looked fake to see a black woman on U.S. currency because that feels radical. Did it feel radical to you when you saw it? I think just seeing anybody different on an official currency is, you know, it's pretty striking. And definitely when the story went up, I mean, it's gotten a huge reaction. You know, I think there's been a lot of people trying to sort of envision what this would look like. You've

seen people on social media do sort of mock-ups of what a Tubman 20 might look like. So I think to see one that actually was created by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, you know, by the federal government was, you know, pretty amazing. Wait, but if the imaging was already mocked up and sitting around at the Treasury Department, does that mean Secretary Mnuchin was misleading people about how prepared the Treasury Department was to issue this bill? That's what it suggests. He made the argument that the Treasury Department and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing

needed to work on the security features and details of the new currency first. But what this shows is that actually a lot of the imagery work had actually been done even before President Trump had taken office in terms of design concepts. And what we learned from our reporting was that this was actually ongoing, at least until as recently as May 2018. Engravers had been doing work on a Harriet Tubman $20 bill image. So it does cast some doubt on what Secretary Mnuchin told Congress in terms of the possibility of unveiling such a note next year. Have you talked to people who are still at the Treasury Department, some of the people who may have played a role in designing this bill,

engraving these slates, who may feel like their work is sort of being caught in this political fray right now? Yeah, I mean, I think people definitely feel like, you know, that, you know, it's become a hot political issue. And it's something, you know, I think the current Treasury Department would probably like to avoid, which may be one of the reasons why they've tried to punt this off into 2026. You know, obviously the Treasury Secretary does not want to make President Trump unhappy, but, you know, generally they try and kind of avoid controversy and deal with issues related to the economy. You know, we've seen since the latest story came out, a lot of members of Congress, particularly Democrats in the House, you know, are unhappy and feel like potentially they were misled by Secretary Mnuchin.

So I think we'll be hearing more about it, especially as 2020 approaches. 2020 and the 20. Exactly. It's a pretty fun story. I mean, you know, we write a lot about, you know, tax reform and trade wars. But, you know, this is an issue that people can really relate to because everybody knows sort of about the cash that comes out of their ATMs and goes in their wallets and they spend every day. Especially the 20, right? Especially the 20. It's widely used.

Yeah, even as, you know, we become more and more cashless. The 20 is a pretty iconic bill and this issue's been floating around for a few years, so I would imagine the issue of Jackson and Tubman is something that people are aware of. Although, I bet if you went around asking people who's on what bill, just on the street, they might not necessarily know all of them. This is Alex Pena, Today Explained intern. I'm outside of the White House asking people how they feel about the 20. So, can you tell me who's on the $20 bill right now?

I think Benjamin Franklin. No one have mercy. Lincoln. I don't know. I don't remember, honestly. Is it Andrew Jackson? Genesee Dare, Andrew Jackson. I think he should absolutely be replaced by Harriet Tubman. I think she's far more deserving.

I think that replacing a man who committed numerous human rights violations with a woman who fought for freedom is a no-brainer and should have been done perhaps a century ago. It's a dark history that we have and that might be one way to say hey you know we're not proud of it we want to see better things moving forward. You cannot change the history so I know this because I'm from Germany. I mean hey it's like what 2019? I say I say let it go it's not that bad of a deal. Everything's got to change sooner or later, so why not? A lot of people would like to see Harriet Tubman's face on the 20,

but she probably wouldn't have really cared. I'm Sean Ramos for them. That's next on Today Explained. Hello? Hello, is this Liz? Yes, hi Sean. Liz, we work together and you told me that your son Desmond uses the KiwiCo. Yeah, Desmond is a big KiwiCo fan. We have been like getting those boxes in the mail probably for about three years now. I think like he progressed from like one kind of crate to another, like maybe like a koala crate to a tinker crate. But yeah,

it's a big deal. We love it. The koala crate to the tinker crate, which to you means something, but to the people out there means little to nothing. But I think if I studied my Kiwi Co crates sufficiently, that means that the koala was kind of the junior thing and he's upped his game to like a more senior thing. Is that yeah exactly so like where he might have been like making like a beanbag game like three years ago like now he's making ballistas and like um cranes so that he can pick up like various things like hot wheel cars cat food hairballs other stuff around the house cool so get kiwi co so your kids can learn how to clean the house i guess it's's too late for you and Desmond, but for everyone else out there, KiwiCo is giving you the chance to try them out for free. Just go to KiwiCo.com slash explained and learn more about their fun projects. And Liz, you can tell your friends.

I will tell my friends. My name is Mary Elliott, and I am the curator of American slavery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the 19th museum in the Smithsonian collection. So Harriet Tubman was born in 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her name was Armenta Harriet Ross. She was born to her parents, Harriet Green and Ben Ross. Her father ultimately gained his freedom. Her mother was supposed to be given her freedom when she turned 45, but in fact, she was not given her freedom. Harriet Tubman, she ended up marrying a gentleman in 1844. It was a free black man. And this is really interesting for people to understand that there were free African-Americans married enslaved African-Americans. And so she was married to a gentleman last name Tubman.

And she changed her name from Araminta, which people knew her as Minty, to Harriet. And that was in honor of her mother. What's important to know is you might even say that their family business was freedom because she was determined to be free. And so she made two attempts in September of 1849. She and her brother Harry and her brother Ben, they attempt to escape, but then her brothers had a second thought, and all three of them return back to Maryland. Then she attempts again in October of 1849, and she's successful, and she flees to Philadelphia.

And so she earns a living and establishes a home. She goes back down in 1850 to free some of her family, her parents, because by the time Harriet Tubman starts really being engaged in the Underground Railroad, her father assists with helping people, usher people through to freedom. She goes back down in 1851 in an attempt to bring her husband up to Philadelphia, but she finds out that he's actually remarried. And then she continues to free more people. In 1851, she gets a group of folks, about 11 folks, and she carries them to freedom to the Canadian border. And over the course of, I think it's at least 13 trips, she frees at least 70 people. The other thing that's important to note is

she had a sister that she attempted to free. When she went to free her sister, she found out that her sister had died before she could free her. And so that was a big heartache for her that she carried with her all her life. Her last excursion on the Underground Railroad is in, I think it's 1860, 1861. But when word gets out about the Civil War, you have many African Americans who jump into the fight, who want to serve in any way they can. And in the Union Army, she was a laundress.

She served as a nurse. And she also served as a spy. It's this sense of a commitment to this fight for freedom. If you're a woman, I can't fight on the front lines, but I'm going to give my service any way I can to make sure that we're successful in winning this war. And she worked with the Union Army to free at least 700 people down in the Combahee River area down in South Carolina. And that's very important. She worked with the U.S. Colored Troops, which is African-American men who were fighting for freedom on the Union Army side. So once the Civil War ends, she moves back to Auburn, New York, where she has her home. And the acreage that she added onto that land, she used to build

a site for the elderly. And she was a suffragist, so she took up the women's suffragist movement. And Susan B. Anthony, in 1904, she introduced her as a living legend, because there's many layers to a life. So she was Araminta Harriet Ross. And to her family and her community, she was known as Minty. And then she changes her name when she gets married to Harriet Tubman. But then in all of her work leading people to freedom, she becomes known in the world as Moses. So who was Minty? Who was Harriet? Who was Moses? And it all comes together

like this constellation in this small but mighty woman. We see these images of her, and she's as an older woman. But we have an image on display right now, and it's an extremely rare photo of her in her 40s. And if you look at that image, it's the earliest known image of her. And that's the woman who was freeing everybody. And so you see this woman who is strong, but she's also very feminine, very much a woman. And I love that about her. Do you think she'd care about seeing her face on a $20 bill? I don't know that it would have mattered to her,

but my sense of Harriet Tubman is that all of her efforts were done because she had a real understanding of what it meant to be free, and she had a real understanding of what is justice. And Harriet Tubman is a true representation of the American story and freedom. And so if I had to do the Mount Rushmore of this nation and I were to think about freedom and justice and equality, I would put Harriet Tubman up there. I don't think she ever did anything for recognition. I think she did it really because in her heart and in her mind and her faith in God and her faith in his giving her the strength to do what she had to do. I don't ever think that she did any of her work

to be recognized. It was enough for her to know that she gave people their freedom, particularly her family and her community. And I think for her, at the end of her life, there was a sense of satisfaction that she freed her family, and in many ways, she freed a nation. Thank you. Thanks to KiwiCo for supporting the show today. KiwiCo makes learning about all sorts of things fun for the kids,

be it slime, be it steam, be it the animals. KiwiCo is offering today explained listeners a chance to try them out for free to redeem the offer and learn more about their projects for kids of all ages. Go to KiwiCo.com slash Explained.