I do not like our $20 bill. Whenever I get money back, I usually ask for two $10 bills instead of a $20 bill. I refuse to give any acknowledgement of merit or any honor to Andrew Jackson.
President Andrew Jackson broke several treaties with the Cherokee Nation before more than 13,000 Cherokee from South Carolina and Georgia were forced to march 1,000 miles on the “Trail of Tears.”
The Cherokee were recognized as a separate nation. They had established a government with representation for all Cherokee members. They had a written language and printed newspapers that were distributed to many places throughout the world.
Individual Cherokee members owned property in Georgia and South Carolina. It was Cherokee land. Some of these Cherokee members found gold on their property in 1828. American citizens in the area thought they should profit from the gold, not the Cherokee.
The “Indian Removal Act” was created in 1830 under President Andrew Jackson. All white persons residing within the Cherokee Nation had to take an oath of loyalty to Georgia and if they broke that oath they could be confined to the penitentiary at hard labor. So nobody but the Cherokee stepped forward to challenge President Andrew Jackson’s plan to relocate the Cherokee to land in Oklahoma.
In 1838, President Jackson ordered the Cherokee, to be taken from their homes with only the clothes they were wearing and they were put in stockades in Georgia. When the last of them were confined, there were 16,543 (some of them were from other tribes, but most of them were Cherokee).
The march was postponed until November. Half of them were started on the walk in November and the other half in December. It was one of the worst winters on record and many of them had scant clothing and no shoes or moccasins. Approximately 4,000 of them died on the “Trail of Tears.”
If you think Hitler did a horrible thing by killing the Jews in his gas chambers, how can you excuse President Andrew Jackson for what he did to the Cherokee?
I am proud to have some Cherokee ancestors. But even if I didn’t, I would not like to honor President Jackson with his picture on our currency. He deserves our disrespect and not our esteem or honor.
I think we should consider what President should replace Andrew Jackson on our $20 bill. I would like to see Jimmy Carter, our 39th President. He was not given credit for any outstanding service while he was president, but I think he has since proven his worth as a humanitarian.
He has worked as a carpenter for Habitat for Humanity for many years since his presidency. He teaches bible class every Sunday and has been a role model for our young people.
In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economics and social development.
If we must honor our way of selecting only dead presidents for our currency, may I suggest we reserve Jimmy Carter for an upcoming change. He will be 93 on Oct. 1 this year and perhaps he would like to know he will replace Andrew Jackson when appropriate. Please consider this possibility or better yet, let’s change that out-dated selection policy and let’s make the change now.
President Jimmy Carter would look great on our $20 bill.
Ledema Renfrow
Pueblo
