Museum Of American Finance Exhibit Features Black Citizens On U.S. Currency

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — A traveling exhibit visiting Manhattan's Museum of American Finance is featuring black Americans on U.S. currency in advance of Harriet Tubman's debut on the $20 bill.

Last year, the U.S. Treasury Secretary announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20. Tubman, the famous Civil War abolitionist, will be the first black person and the first woman to be featured on the front of U.S. paper currency.

Two women behind the Museum of UnCut Funk thought the news of Tubman's $20 bill would be a good opportunity to showcase other black Americans who have been featured on U.S. currency, a traveling show that's currently stopped at the Museum of American Finance in Manhattan. Loreen Williamson and Pamela Thomas launched the Museum of UnCut Funk, a virtual museum that lives online and focuses on 1970s black culture. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

The exhibit currently open in the Financial District includes a slew of commemorative coins, medals and medallions, featuring black Americans from Marian Anderson to Dr. Dorothy Height to Barack Obama.

"I bet you didn’t know there was all this money with actual black people on it," Thomas told the New York Times in a recent interview. "And I doubt anybody knows the process that was undertaken to get these people put on currency...If you look at it from the perspective of, ‘Well, damn, I had no idea about this,’ that makes it pretty funky."

The exhibit will be open at Museum of American Finance through January.

Lead image via Mark Lennihan / Associated Press.