Treasury Secretary: Putting Harriet Tubman On $20 Not A Priority
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Last April, the Treasury Department announced that Harriet Tubman would become the first black woman on U.S. paper currency.
There has never been a set time for when the new $20 bill will be issued, but the department had committed to completing the design for it by 2020.
But in an interview Thursday, current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said getting the bill changed is not something he's focused on.
"Ultimately we will be looking at this issue, [but] It's not something that I'm focused on at the moment," he said, noting that he's more concerned with anti-counterfeiting features on paper money.
Tubman, an African-American abolitionist who was born in Maryland and is best known for being a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad that led slaves to freedom, would replace the image of Andrew Jackson on the bill.
Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was a slave owner and an architect of the infamous Trail of Tears via his signing of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Supporters of the movement to change the $20 bill have criticized his place on it for those reasons.
Tubman won an unofficial 2015 contest run by The Women on 20s campaign, beating out Eleanor Roosevelt. The contest marked the centennial of women's suffrage.
It appears the campaign had an impact on President Barack Obama's Treasury, which was led by Secretary Jack Lew, since Lew announced the change about a year after it was held.
Follow @CBSBaltimore on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on Facebook
