It's All About The Benjamins And Jacksons — But What About The Women?

Transcript

DON GONYEA, HOST:

The college basketball playoffs turn March into a month when many of us become bracket watchers. But NPR's Brian Naylor is keeping his eye on a different playoff, an online campaign to choose a woman to put on the $20 bill.

BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: If you look into your wallet, whether you're feeling flush or not, there's one thing the bills you do find all have in common - the faces of dead white men. Most are presidents - Washington, Lincoln and Jackson - a few, Hamilton and Franklin, famous for other reasons. But not one of the faces is female. Some women in New York are trying to change that. They've started a campaign, Women On 20s, to build public interest and select a woman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Susan Ades Stone serves as spokeswoman for the campaign. She says Jackson is the ideal candidate to drop from the currency. Ades Stone says he has a checkered legacy, including driving Native Americans out of the Southeast. And, she says, Jackson didn't even like paper money.

SUSAN ADES STONE: He happened to have been a fierce opponent of the central bank and of paper money. He believed that gold and silver coin was the only legitimate money.

NAYLOR: She says putting a woman on the 20 also has a nice symmetry. The 100th anniversary of women's suffrage is coming up in 2020. There are 15 women on the first-round ballot ranging from Susan B. Anthony to Rosa Parks to Rachel Carson.

ADES STONE: People will choose three candidates in the first round, which we're calling the primaries, and then the top three vote-getters will go on to the final round. And people will come back again and vote for a winner. And, you know, that person is who we will propose to the president as the people's choice.

NAYLOR: As it happens, President Obama once suggested he might just support putting a woman on the currency. Here he is during a speech in Kansas City last July.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Last week, a young girl wrote to ask me, why aren't there any women on our currency? And then - and then she gave me, like, a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff, which I thought was a pretty good - pretty good idea.

NAYLOR: Ades Stone says organizers of the Women On 20s campaign hope to get 100,000 votes by the end of March before moving on to the next round of balloting. And she says the change is overdue.

ADES STONE: There hasn't been a change of the portraits since 1929, and we're such a different country than we were then. You know, we're a more diverse country. We're more inclusive, and our money should reflect that. You know, our money says something about us as a society, and, you know, it's time to bring our money into the 21st century.

NAYLOR: Or, as their website suggests, a woman's place is on the money. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.