Tubman should replace Hamilton on the $10 bill

Home Opinion Tubman should replace Hamilton on the $10 bill

Put the American Moses on the $10 bill.

Harriet Tubman led her people out of bondage. She was a slave, a fugitive, an abolitionist, a spy, a suffragette, and one of America’s greatest women.

Currency is a means for countries to celebrate their heroes and educate their citizens. America must remember Harriet Tubman better, and the Treasury’s announcement that it will replace Alexander Hamilton’s image on the $10 bill with that of a woman provides the perfect chance to ensure she is. Tubman received 20 percent in a McClatchy-Marist poll responding to the planned change.

Born in 1822, Tubman escaped slavery to the relative safety of Philadelphia. But the plight of her people called out to her and she set forth to lead her people to freedom. She and her fellow abolitionists established the Underground Railroad, the network of safe homes slaves followed north, prompting William Lloyd Garrison to name her “Moses.”

“I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,” she said.

Tubman worked to support the Union throughout the Civil War, believing its victory necessary for the freedom of American slaves. After President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman took to the front lines as a spy and scout, even leading a raid that freed more than 750 slaves. After the war, Tubman became a suffragist, and fought for women’s right to vote alongside Susan B. Anthony and the other captains of that cause. She died in 1913, penniless but celebrated.

Tubman should actually be on the $20 bill, but circumstances have prevented that. The organization that pushed the
Obama administration to add a woman to the paper currency lineup, Women on 20s, intended to replace Andrew Jackson. Barbara Ortiz Howard, its founder, saw the opportunity to honor a great American woman and to repudiate Jackson’s legacy of abuse of Native Americans and opposition to a centralized American banking system. In a bizarre irony, due to the Treasury’s desire to update the $10 bill for anti-counterfeiting purposes, America will instead replace Alexander Hamilton and cease to honor his legacy as founder of the national bank. If we are to lose the face of a man so closely tied to the founding of America’s financial system, then let us at least gain a woman’s image who represents another vital part of the American story.

Tubman’s life redemptively illustrates the darkness of the American story. Her suffering and the violence she experienced as a slave — head trauma from beatings gave her trouble throughout her life — mark one of America’s ugliest chapters. Her work, her railroad, her commitment to be a Moses to her people and a sister to her fellow women, show that black night to be merely the passage through a tunnel.

As an African-American, as a spy and soldier, as a person in poverty, Tubman represents the larger story of America. She is distinguished by more than her womanhood.

“Diversity” is not just the nice word for identity politics. America is a diverse nation united by shared freedoms. We can honor Harriet Tubman and her sacrifices for freedom, and celebrate America’s diversity, by remembering her on the $10 bill.