Harriet Tubman Beats Eleanor Roosevelt As New Face On $20 Bill

Harriet Tubman turned out to be the popular choice to be the face of a new $20 bill. According to a recent online poll by a nonprofit group called Women On 20s, more than 33 percent of the people who participated want the African-American abolitionist to replace former U.S. President Andrew Jackson.

Women On 20s announced the poll results Tuesday. The online poll went on for 10 weeks to find a woman who could replace the former president on the bill. The group also submitted a video to President Obama with a written petition so that he could make the change.

The campaign used the hashtag #DearMrPresident and managed to gather 352,431 votes in the final round. While Tubman got 33.6 percent of the votes, it was former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who came in second with a narrow margin. She received 31.5 percent of the votes. Tubman got around 7,000 more than what Roosevelt managed to get. Civil rights activist Rosa Parks beat Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller for the third position with a difference of 5,470 votes.

The official petition recalls Tubman’s past. “WHEREAS, Finalist Harriet Tubman (c.1822-1913), born a slave, fled to the North for freedom, yet braved 19 trips back to the South as the conductor of the Underground Railroad, guiding some 300 slaves to freedom,” the official website says, “in addition, she served the Union army during the Civil War as a nurse, scout and spy; she was also active in the women's suffrage movement after the war.”

Susan Ades Stone, the executive director of the organization, told CBS News that U.S. paper bills were like “pocket monuments to great figures in history.” She said that it would be highly appropriate to have a $20 bill featuring Tubman during the centennial of women's suffrage in 2020.

While the $20 bill is all set to have a woman replacing the former president, CNN reported that a new $10 bill was also on its way. According to a Treasury Department spokesperson, the new bill would enter circulation in 2020. The new $10 bill is expected to be the first one with a raised "tactile feature," making it easy for the blind to identify it.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au