$20 and Change: Harriet Tubman, George Floyd, and the Struggle for Radical Democracy

What the fight over whose image should appear on the $20 bill reveals about America's reckoning with racism, past and present.

Black Movements Matter. So do the symbols that represent them. In a positive step toward greater diversity in official symbolism, on April 20, 2016, then Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that the image of Harriet Tubman would replace that of Andrew Jackson on the face of the US twenty-dollar bill. Reflecting on the year-long public response regarding which American should replace Jackson on the twenty, Lew stated, "Our currency will now tell more of our story and reflect the contributions of women as well as men to our great democracy."

Several years later, however, the decision to enshrine Harriet Tubman on US currency was obfuscated and quietly put on the shelf by the Trump administration. When Biden won the White House, it was again announced that Tubman would replace Jackson.

In $20 and Change, African American scholar Clarence Lusane offers a searing examination of what the fight to replace Andrew Jackson's face with Harriet Tubman's on the front of twenty-dollar bill reveals about race, class, and social justice in America today. Weaving together history and political analysis, Lusane gives voice to the millions of Americans who mobilized for the Tubman twenty becoming a part of the long legacy of people of color and women challenging symbols of patriarchy, racism, and white supremacy. He also discusses the movement that emerged in outrage over the killing of George Floyd, arrested for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

 Lusane argues that while Andrew Jackson's image represents a flawed vision of democracy that tolerates white supremacy, Harriett Tubman's represents the demand for gender equity, racial justice, and the struggle of working people for social inclusion and economic fairness—radical democracy.  With insight and urgency, Lusane explains why such a democracy matters, and how national symbols in support of social justice serve to unify and strengthen us as a people.