Put A Friendly Woman on the $20
I like this. An online campaign has taken off to bounce old Andy Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with a woman.
There are 15 finalists on the group’s current list. We get to vote for three.
The first thing I like about this list is that it’s a no-lose proposition. any of the fifteen would look good on the $20.
But the next thing I like about it (maybe even better, I admit) is that all of my three votes could go for Quakers of one sort or another.
Take Sojourner Truth, for instance. When the Progressive Friends of Pennsylvania opened their founding yearly meeting session in 1853, there she was on the platform, and she proceeded to make Quaker history by not only speaking but then singing a song!
(More about all this in my book, “Remaking Friends.”)
Another Progressive Friend on the roster, even more familiar to feminists, is Susan B. Anthony.
And not least, there is Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, raised a New Jersey Hicksite Friend, a thorough radical and Quaker til the end.
There’s more about this list, and possible additions, in a fun column by Gail Collins in the New York Times. Collins urges the addition of the brilliant Angelina Grimke, a onetime Friend whose spirit and integrity were way too big for the small minds who controlled the Society in her day.
So yes, I voted in this unofficial but exciting poll, and I hope thee will too.
For whom?? Well, let’s just say I did it in a Friendly way, and offer that as a suggestion . . .