Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill
WASHINGTON (WTVD) -- ABC News has confirmed through a Treasury spokesman that Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced last summer that the government was going to incorporate a woman on the $10 bill, which would mark the first appearance of a female portrait on U.S. paper currency in 100 years.
Treasury received more than 1.5 million responses to Lew's request for suggestions on the currency redesign. That prompted him to delay an announcement, which he had originally said would be made by the end of 2015.
An online group, Women on 20s, had been campaigning for a woman on the $20 bill. Jackson's critics say he should not be on U.S. currency because of the part he played in the relocation of Native Americans.
In a poll conducted last year by Women on 20s, Tubman, an African-American abolitionist and one of the leaders' of the Underground Railroad, was the top vote getter.
Lew's initial announcement last year that Alexander Hamilton would be replaced on the $10 bill set off a firestorm of protests from supporters of Hamilton. They argued that the founding father had molded the nation's financial architecture and should not be removed from his rightful place on the currency.
The new $10 bill will still feature Alexander Hamilton on its front, but on its reverse will now feature five leaders of the suffragist movement: Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul.
On the $5 bill, the front will still feature President Lincoln but the reverse will depict historic events that occurred at the Lincoln Memorial and include opera singer Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt, according to the U.S. Treasury.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
