Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced Wednesday that a woman will be featured on a redesigned $10 bill in 2020.
So, who will be the lucky woman?
The change is for the 100th anniversary of the Constitution’s 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, Lew said in a video.
He is soliciting help from the public by asking them to tweet at the Treasury using the hashtag #TheNew10 or through the website TheNew10.Treasury.gov.
His only requirement for whoever the public suggests is that the woman is no longer living. So if Hillary Clinton or Carly Fiorina become the next president, the first female president won’t be considered.
WomenOn20s, an organization that had been working toward choosing the best woman to be featured on the $20 dollar bill, had a vote on the top women who should be on the next dollar bill. This year, the organization narrowed a list of women down to Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller. After 600,000 people voted, Harriet Tubman was the winner.
According to the organization’s founder Barbara Ortiz Howard, they presented a petition to President Barack Obama urging him and the Treasury Department to make the change.
The suggestion to change the $10 bill instead of the $20 was based on recommendations from the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence (ACD) Steering Committee, according to TheNew10.Treasury.gov.
Martha Washington was the last woman on U.S. paper currency, featured on the $1 Silver Certificate between 1891 and 1896.
Terry O’Neill, The National Organization for Women (NOW) president, told CNN that she hopes whoever is selected is a woman who advocated for social justice.
“We don’t just want one women,” O’Neill told CNN. “We’re hoping there will be more change after this.”
Here’s a list of options for the next person on the $10 bill, in no particular order:
1. Wilma Mankiller
As the first woman to lead the Cherokee people, Mankiller was an activist for Native American and women’s rights until her death in 2010. She served as the chief for two years and continued to advocate for Native American rights after she served the role. After her passing, President Barack Obama weighed in with a statement, saying, “She transformed the Nation-to-Nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Federal Government, and served as an inspiration to women in Indian Country and across America.” However, her last name is “Mankiller,” which may be strong for someone who may become the first woman on the dollar bill for obvious reasons.
2. Eleanor Roosevelt
Roosevelt was the longest serving first lady throughout her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office. She is remembered as understanding the social conditions of the United States better than anyone before her, and reinvented how first lady’s serve in the office by being accessible to her constituents. She is best known for helping to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after her time as first lady, when she served as the UN’s Human Rights Commission chair. She died on November 7, 1962.
3. Susan B. Anthony
Women’s right’s activist Susan B. Anthony is remembered for her a sense of justice and moral determination. She was a Quaker who joined the human’s rights movement in 1852 and devoted her life to women’s suffrage along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In addition to women’s suffrage, she advocated to end slavery, the right for women to own property and for women’s labor organizations. She died March 13, 1906 having never seen the right for women to vote come to fruition.
4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an advocate for women’s suffrage and an abolitionist. She was also one of the women in the 1850s who also advocated for a women’s right to divorce. She and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 and she served as president for two years. She died on Oct. 26, 1902, also never having seen women’s suffrage a law.
5. Sally Ride
Sally Ride was the first American woman in space in 1983 on the Challenger. An astronaut and astrophysicist, she beat 1,000 other applicants for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) astronaut program. She took two trips to space during her time in NASA. She died on July 23, 2012 of pancreatic cancer. She didn’t change any federal laws during her time in NASA, so the Treasury may want someone who helped implement a countrywide change in culture.
6. Rosa Parks
Parks became a famous symbol for the civil rights movement after refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in 1955. The famous event became a catalyst for the Montgomery boycott, and other events that eventually led to the end of segregation in the United States. She died Oct. 24, 2005.
7. Harriet Tubman
She is considered the frontrunner for the $10 bill, and was the favorite for the $20 bill, until the Treasury announced that the $10 bill would be the first to have a woman prominently featured. Even CNN Contributor Donna Brazile weighed in and said she’s her favorite woman in history to play the role. Tubman is one of the most famous abolitionists for her work in the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and died in 1913.