Change for a $20

Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became an icon of the Underground Railroad, is the new face of the $20 bill. Tubman is bumping incumbent Andrew Jackson off the currency, while the suddenly hip Alexander Hamilton will remain on the face of the $10 bill. The $5 bill will also change, with its back to now feature Martin Luther King, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and opera legend Marian Anderson. The New York Times reports that the redesigns, from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, would be announced in 2020 in time for the centennial of woman’s suffrage and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. None of the bills, including a new $5 note, would reach circulation until the next decade. It was unclear whether details of the unexpectedly sweeping changes would mollify some women’s groups, who had excoriated Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew for reneging on his 10-month-old commitment to put a woman on the face of the $10 bill, which is the one currently in line for an anti-counterfeiting makeover. But in the months of taking public comments on what woman he should pick, Mr. Lew evidently bowed to the Broadway-stoked mania around the $10 bill’s current star, Alexander Hamilton. Instead, images of women are expected to grace the back of the new bill, with Tubman taking the top spot on a redesigned $20 further into the future.