Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Why Harriet Tubman Will Be on the $10 Bill
Why Harriet Tubman Will Be on the $10 Bill
Jan 9, 2026 9:06 PM

Last week the U.S. Treasury announced the $10 bill is next paper currency scheduled for a major redesign, a process that takes years because of the anti-counterfeiting technology involved, and will feature a “notable woman.”

The new ten will be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the passage of the nineteenth amendment, which gave women the right to vote. As the Treasury explains, “The passage of the nineteenth amendment granted women their right to fully participate in the system our country was founded on—a government by the people, a democracy.”

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says his agency is seeking input on “how we can use the new $10 note to best represent the values of our inclusive democracy.” He encourages people to use the hashtag #TheNewTen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You needn’t bother tweeting your choice, though. I’m almost certain they already know who Treasury is going to choose: It’s going to beHarriet Tubman.

Here’s why, based on a presumed list of criteria for the female candidate:

She will be dead, and pro-democracy — A primary criteria for getting your face on America’s money is that you have to be dead. Plenty of famous women meet that criteria, of course, but that’s the first hurdle. The second one sets a higher bar. As the Treasury website notes:

Democracy is the theme for the next redesigned series and the Secretary will select a woman recognized by the public who was a champion for democracy in the United States. The person should be iconic and have made a significant contribution to — or impact on — protecting the freedoms on which our nation was founded.

That requirement narrows the field considerably.

She will have name recognition — If you didn’t hear her name mentioned in history class in junior high, you likely won’t see her name linked to the new ten.

She will not be Susan B. Anthony — Anthony seems like she would be the obvious choice, considering her connection to the 19th Amendment. And she has plenty of champions (such as Dominic Bouck, O.P. at First Things) who would love to see her share the bill with Alexander Hamilton. But there is also an obvious reason it won’t be Anthony: she was already on the dollar.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar was a dollar coin minted from 1979 to 1981 and again in 1999. The public hated it—not Anthony, just the coin (which was too similar in size to the quarter). But Anthony had her shot. The Treasury Department is not going to waste this historic opportunity to simply shift Anthony’s visage from a coin to a paper bill.

She will be African American — To date, only two women have appeared on U.S. paper currency. One was white (Martha Washington) and the other was Native American (Pocahontas). It’s time for an African American woman.

In light of those tentative requirements, the field is narrowed to only three candidates: Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth.

Parks has been called the “mother of the civil rights movement” because of her role in the Montgomery bus boycott. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993, was presented the Medal of Freedom Award by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, and after her death on October 24, 2005, Congress approved a resolution allowing her body to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. She’s a solid contender, but she’s too current a figure.

At the time of the currency unveiling, Parks will have been gone from this life for 15 years. Assuming that America will continue to exist and that Bitcoin won’t replace paper money, there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to honor Parks by putting her on our money.

That leaves only Tubman and Truth.

Both Tubman and Truth were former slaves who became abolitionists and later fought for women’s suffrage alongside Susan B. Anthony. Both are the very models of “inclusive democracy”, which make both the primary contenders for placement on the new ten.

I could have titled this article “Why Sojourner Truth Will Be on the $10 Bill”—and I almost did. If Truth were chosen over Tubman it’d be only a mild surprise. But Tubman gains a slight advantage because of her name recognition.

Tubman is better known because her role in the abolition movement is slightly more impressive. Truth gained prominence mainly as a speaker while Tubman was active in helping slaves escape to freedom. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison even dubbed Tubman “Moses” because of the way she led her people out of bondage.

For these reasons, Harriet Tubman will be the one sharing space on the new ten with Alexander Hamilton, the only Founding Father on our currency who never owned slaves.

How sure am I this will be Treasurer Lew’s choice? Almost certain. If I were a betting man I’d bet you a $10 it’ll be Tubman.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
There is no ‘Catholic case for communism’
On Tuesday, the Jesuit-runAmerica magazine published an apology for Communism that would have been embarrassing in Gorbachev-era Pravda. “The Catholic Case for Communism” minimizes Marxism’s intensely anti-Christian views, ignores its oppression and economic decimation of its citizens, distorts the bulk of Catholic social teaching on socialism, and seemingly ends with a call to revolution. While author Dean Dettloff claims to own Marxism’s “real and tragic mistakes,” he downplays these to the point of farce. He admits, without elaboration, that “Communism...
Edmund Burke on true freedom
In the United States, a growing number of Americans, especially young Americans, are calling for extreme personal autonomy in the guise of “freedom,” while promoting increased government control and coercion. The left, for example, defends radical pro-abortion laws motivated by a desire for personal autonomy. Yet, they look to the government to enforce their radical individualism. Additionally, the left’s praise of democratic socialism has increased dramatically in the past decade. Now, over half of Democrats are in favor of socialism...
Explainer: What you should know about the federal government’s two-year budget deal
What just happened? Yesterday the House of Representatives passed a passed a two-year budget and an agreement to once again raise the debt limit. The bill, known as the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, is expected to be passed by the Senate next week. What does the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 do? The legislation amends the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to establish a congressional budget for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The main actions...
China’s recycling ban: Surprisingly helpful for the environment
Off the coast of California floats a Texas-sized island made out of garbage. prised almost entirely of humanity’s plastic waste. Where did this garbage mass in the middle of the Pacific Ocean came from? Plastic dumping. Plastic dumping is the practice of simply throwing away waste into rivers or lakes which eventually lead out into the ocean. Why isn’t this plastic being recycled? Why does this island of garbage continue to grow despite laws that prevent plastic dumping? The answer...
Inadequate: Catholic magazine explains why it published Communist propaganda
If Dean Dettloff’s “The Catholic Case for Communism” were intended to be thought-provoking, it raises only one question: Why did America magazine facilitate this mendacious PR exercise? Editor Fr. Matt Malone, S.J.. felt a need to explain “Why we published an essay sympathetic munism.” (Read our analysis of the original article here.) Fr. Malone likened the article to the magazine bashing Senator Joe McCarthy, which he said took place after America “spent much of the previous 50 years loudly munism.”...
Explainer: What you should know about federal deficits
What just happened? The White House Office of Management and Budget recently released a forecast that the federal deficit would exceed $1 trillion this year. As Fox News points out, this would be the first time since the four years following the Great Recession that the deficit reached that level. What is the federal deficit? The term federal deficit refers to the federal government’s fiscal year budget deficit. Such a deficit occurs when total outgoing expenditures (such as for buying...
Virtue in a tech economy: Why STEM education isn’t enough
As our global economy has grown more technological, connected, plex, fears continue to loom about an economic future wherein our workers are rendered obsolete—whether by new products and industries, new forms of automation, or petitive labor forces across the globe. Struggling to keep up with the pace, e to embrace technical knowledge and skills-based expertise as the supreme value in many of our educational institutions, crafting a host of STEM education programs and various incentives to prod and prepare our...
French-language readers of transatlantic learn of free-market environmentalism
The Acton Institute continues our outreach to the Francophone world with a new translation of one of our articles on the pivotal issue of environmental stewardship. The latest offering illustrates how the free market cares for creation better than government intervention. Our friend Benoît H. Perringraciously translated Joseph Sunde’s article “Free market environmentalism: Conserving and collaborating with nature”; the resultant “Une écologie de marché pour collaborer avec la nature” may be read at Acton’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website. Sunde...
Religion in Europe? It’s complicated
It’s not unusual for Europe—especially Western Europe—to be portrayed as a continent in which religion and, more specifically, religious practice is in decline. No doubt there’s much truth to that. When you start looking at the hard information, however, it soon es apparent that the situation is plicated. Take, for example, France. It is often portrayed as a highly secularized society. Again, there is considerable truth to that picture. Yet a recent study of the state of religion in France...
Samuel Gregg on a bishop in France’s public square
Michel Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris, was rather new to his role when the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris fire pushed him into the spotlight. But Aupetit was more than ready to take his place in the public square, says Samuel Gregg. In a book review for The University Bookman, Gregg considers the archbishop’s role in the representing the Catholic faith: Archbishops of Paris have traditionally been seen as representative of Catholicism in France and setting the tone for how the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved