Money tells a historic story.
Every portrait placed on a bill announces whom this nation has chosen to honor—and whose history it expects us to carry in our pockets.
Ten years ago, the Treasury Department announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. That plan has been repeatedly delayed.
While Tubman continues to wait, some supporters of Donald Trump are promoting a new $250 bill bearing his likeness, even though Congress has not authorized the denomination and current law prohibits living people from appearing on American currency.
The contrast could hardly be more offensive.
Harriet Tubman was born enslaved and escaped to freedom, then repeatedly risked her life to return south and lead others out of bondage. She served the Union as a nurse, scout and spy. In 1863, she helped lead the Combahee River Raid, which liberated hundreds of enslaved people. Later, she advocated for women’s suffrage. She devoted her life to the proposition that freedom was worth fighting for, even when the fight brought her neither wealth nor comfort.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, is a billionaire president who has repeatedly blurred the line between public power and private enrichment. He has put his name on buildings, products, and public institutions.
It is the currency of oligarchy, which is what happens when wealth buys political power, political power protects and multiplies wealth, and public institutions are bent toward the glorification of people who already possess both.
The Tubman $20 would tell a different story.
A $20 bill is not a rare commemorative object locked in a collector’s case. It is ordinary money. It passes across grocery counters and restaurant tables. It is slipped into church collection plates and handed to grandchildren. It pays for haircuts, prescriptions, school supplies, and rides home. It is folded into a child’s birthday card by an auntie who wants the child to have “a little something.”
Imagine Harriet Tubman making those journeys.
Imagine a child opening that birthday card and asking who the woman on the bill is. Imagine generations of Americans encountering Tubman not only during Black History Month, but every day—at the ATM, the corner store, and the kitchen table.
That is why representation on currency matters. It is history placed into circulation.
Tubman was not merely an inspirational figure. She challenged an economic system. Enslavement was not only racial terrorism; it was coerced labor that created enormous wealth for white people while treating Black people as property. Each time Tubman led another person to freedom, she stole labor away from enslavers and disrupted the economics of bondage.
That makes her especially appropriate for American currency.
She also understood that freedom without economic power is fragile. After the Civil War, despite her service to the Union, she struggled for years to receive adequate compensation and a pension. The nation benefited from her courage more readily than it paid its debt to her.
Harriet Tubman belongs on the $20 bill because she represents the best of this nation—not the nation as it was, but the nation that generations have struggled to make it become. She chose liberation over submission, collective freedom over personal safety and service over self-enrichment.
Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, commentator and president emerita of Bennett College for Women.