## New commemorative coins celebrate abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s life and legacy

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**Canonical URL:** [New commemorative coins celebrate abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s life and legacy](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2024/03/currency-notes0324.pdf)

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### Overview
- The US Mint will release three commemorative coins depicting Harriet Tubman: a $5 gold coin, a $1 silver coin, and a half-dollar clad coin.
- The law authorizing the coins was passed in 2022, the bicentennial of Tubman’s birth.
- The coins are legal tender but intended primarily as collector’s items and will not be in general circulation.
- Surcharges from the sale of the coins will go to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Harriet Tubman Home, Inc., a nonprofit in Auburn, New York.

### Historical highlights featured on the coins
- Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland.
- She escaped slavery and served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, thought to have made over a dozen high-risk missions to the South and credited with leading an estimated 70 people to freedom.
- Tubman later became a nurse and Army scout for the Union Army in the US Civil War and was the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war; one raid led to freedom for hundreds of enslaved people in South Carolina.
- In later years she gave speeches in support of women’s voting rights, civil rights, and health care.
- She died in 1913 in Auburn, New York.

### Design elements and symbolism
- The silver dollar’s obverse depicts Tubman’s experiences as an Underground Railroad conductor “offering her hand to the viewer with an expression that challenges the viewer to seize the opportunity for freedom,” according to the US Mint website.
- The silver dollar’s reverse depicts silhouetted figures crossing a bridge formed by a pair of clasped hands; in the sky, the Big Dipper points to the North Star, which forms the “o” in the United States of America.
- The $5 gold coin draws on the theme of helping hands, as a tribute to Tubman’s continued commitment to others, even after the Civil War.

### Context and outreach
- Ventris C. Gibson, director of the Mint, said in a press release: “Every coin produced by the United States Mint helps to tell a story that teaches us about America’s history or connects us to a special memory. We hope this program will honor the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman.”
- Plans to feature Tubman on the US $20 banknote have been delayed in recent years.

*Source: currency-notes0324*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2024/03/currency-notes0324.pdf_