Treasury: Woman will be picked for $10 bill
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 9 years, 7 months AGO
WASHINGTON (AP) - Alexander Hamilton, who has been featured on the $10 bill since 1929, is making way for a woman.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will announce today that a redesign of the $10 will feature the first woman on the nation's paper money in more than a century. The plan is to decide which woman sometime this summer.
The bill will have new security features to make it harder to counterfeit and will be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. The date it will be put into circulation will be announced later.
Lew is asking the public for suggestions on who should be chosen for the bill, as well as what symbols of democracy it should feature. Ideas can be submitted at thenew10.treasury.gov website.
Various groups have been campaigning to get a woman honored on the nation's paper currency, which has been an all-male domain for more than a century. The last woman featured on U.S. paper money was Martha Washington, who was on a dollar silver certificate from 1891 to 1896. The only other woman ever featured on U.S. paper money was Pocahontas, from 1865 to 1869. Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea are on dollar coins.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, who is sponsoring legislation to put a woman on the $20 bill, praised Lew for moving forward with a decision to use the $10 bill - the next denomination of currency scheduled to be redesigned.