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Washington • Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has decided to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, making her the first woman on U.S. paper currency in 100 years, a Treasury official said Wednesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of Lew's official announcement, said the 19th century abolitionist and a leader of the Underground Railroad, would replace the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president.
Lew's announcement is expected to provide details on other changes being made to the $20, $10 and $5 bills.
The decision to place Tubman's portrait on the $20 likely means that Lew has decided to keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, a victory for those who had opposed his initial plan to remove Hamilton.
An online group, Women on 20s, said it was encouraged that Lew was responding to its campaign to replace Jackson with a woman. But it said it would not claim victory unless Lew also committed to issuing the new $20 bill at the same time that the redesigned $10 bill is scheduled to be issued in 2020.
The $10 bill is the next note scheduled to be redesigned to introduce updated protections against counterfeiting. That redesign was scheduled to be unveiled in 2020, which marks the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. Lew had often cited that connection as a reason to put a woman on the $10 bill.
However, the effort ran into strong objections from supporters of Hamilton, who is enjoying renewed interest with the hit Broadway musical "Hamilton."
Suggestions by Lew that a woman might not feature on the front of the new bill triggered a backlash among women's rights activists. Lew suggested in an interview March 30 with Charlie Rose that the government might leave Hamilton on the bill's front portrait, saying the former Treasury secretary is one of his heroes.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Lisa Maatz, American Association of University Women's vice president of government relations, said last week, before the new bill was introduced. "A promise was made and it should be fulfilled. I don't know any particular reason why they would back away from it."
A group of women including feminist icons Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas and soccer star Abby Wambach sent a letter to Lew on Wednesday before his announcement urging him to put a woman on the front of the $10. They started a Twitter hashtag .NotGoingBack to urge him to keep what they said was a promise to replace Hamilton with a woman.
"As a country, it is about time we put our money where our mouth is in the fight to support women," they wrote.
The politics of swapping out Jackson might be easier. He had been a slave owner and is not enjoying a renaissance like Hamilton. Jackson was put under the lens last year in a book by National Public Radio journalist Steve Inskeep, who examined Jackson's role in forcing Native Americans from their homelands.
The expectation is that Lew will propose replacing the Treasury building, now on the back of the $10 bill, with a mural-style depiction of the suffrage moment.