R.
Persinger Philadelphia Tribune - In the upcoming years, you may be able to look
in your
wallet and see Philadelphia’s own Marian Anderson on the back of a $5
bill. Although Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew made the announcement regarding
the design updates to the $5, $10 and $20 bills earlier this year — he was in
town on Friday discussing historic changes in currency as he toured the Marian
Anderson Residence Museum and met with graduate students from the University of
Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Anderson, along with Eleanor Roosevelt and
Martin Luther King Jr., will be on the reverse side of the new $5 bill. The
front of the bill will retain President Abraham Lincoln’s portrait. “I came
here today, because as part of our redesign of our United States currency, our
money, one of the things we’re going to be doing in representing more of
American history, we’re putting images of women, images of people who have not
been on our currency before,” Lew said. “The whole country should be reflected
in the history that we show in our currency.” Additionally, on the reverse side
of the $10 bill, heroes from the women’s suffrage movement will be added. Those
women include Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The front of the bill will still contain Alexander
Hamilton. Lastly, the front of the $20 bill will include the portrait of
Harriet Tubman, while the back will contain the White House and an image of
President Andrew Jackson. “We’re actively working on the $5, the $10 and the
$20,” Lew said. “The bills will come out in an order that is determined by
security requirements. Which bill needs to be replaced to make sure our
currency is safe. We’re doing everything we can in our remaining time to make
sure that we’ve got everything in place for that schedule to be accelerated,
not deaccelerated.”
The
Treasury Department projects that the new currency will be unveiled in 2020, in
conjunction with the 100th anniversary of 19th Amendment, which gave women the
right to vote. Due to security needs, the $10 bill is slated to be redesigned
next. Ultimately, the Secretary of Treasury makes the final decision on
currency design. Because the administration of President Barack Obama is coming
to an end, final action on the redesign will have to be approved and made by
the following administration.
“I
think the enthusiasm about the announcement and what we’ve made has left an
important mark,” Lew said. “I think the decisions like the decision of Harriet
Tubman on the $20; people have already started calling them ‘Tubmans’ and
they’re not even printed yet.”
On
Friday morning, Lew walked into the acclaimed singer’s former tiny South
Philadelphia row house located at 762 Martin St., and was greeted by museum
official Jillian Pirtle. He received a tour that began on the level floor where
gowns of the former singer were displayed, then climbed upstairs to the second
floor, and then down to the basement. Back on the ground level, Lew was treated
to a performance of two songs — one sung by Pirtle. “I had a great visit at the
Marian Anderson Museum,” Lew told reporters. “It really preserves the history
and the legacy of Marian Anderson in a very moving way, here in the house that
she lived in and in the city that she lived and that she loved.” Anderson
bought the house in the 1920s and she died in 1993. The home is maintained by
the Marian Anderson Historical Society, an organization founded by Blance
Burton-Lyles.
Anderson,
was born in Philadelphia in 1897 and is one of the world’s most revered contraltos.
She sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 and was the first African American to
perform at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1955.
“Marian
Anderson is in a very special place,” Lew said of the museum. “A major event
both in her career and in the length of our country was when she sang on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the invitation of First Lady (Eleanor)
Roosevelt at a time when Washington’s concert halls were still segregated.”
Pirtle called having Anderson on America’s $5 bill fitting. “I think it is the
sweet culmination of everything she endeared in her life,” she. “Marian’s life
was never really easy. She endured so much racial discrimination, so much
oppression and anti-feminism of women succeeding in life. But she overcame.”
She’s thankful for Lew’s visit. “For him to have such a profound appreciation
for Marian and her life and her legacy ... to come and tour her beautiful
museum and home has meant the world to me as an artist and as an ambassador’s
of Marian’s name and her great will through this museum.”
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