Top 25 People Who Deserve to Be on American Money

Four faces already hold the paper currency. This list runs a good deal longer than four.

1. 1
   Martin Luther King Jr.

   Led the civil rights movement and has a federal holiday but no banknote.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Harriet Tubman

   Escaped slavery and led dozens of others north; long proposed for the twenty-dollar note.
   999pts
3. 3
   Andrew Jackson

   On the twenty-dollar bill since 1928 and at the centre of the long debate over replacing him with Harriet Tubman.
   952pts
4. 4
   George Washington

   On the one-dollar bill and the quarter, the most widely circulated face in American history.
   734pts
5. 5
   Maya Angelou

   Poet and memoirist who in 2022 became the first Black woman to appear on a US quarter.
   659pts
6. 6
   Franklin D. Roosevelt

   On the dime, the president who took the country through the Depression and the war.
   659pts
7. 7
   Benjamin Franklin

   Has been on the hundred-dollar note since the first $100 Federal Reserve Notes of 1914.
   659pts
8. 8
   Alexander Hamilton

   On the ten-dollar bill as the founder of the Treasury that prints it.
   659pts
9. 9
   Amelia Earhart

   First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, among the leading names in a 2015 Marist poll on a woman for the ten-dollar bill.
   571pts
10. 10
    Susan B. Anthony

    Campaigned for women's suffrage and appeared on a short-lived dollar coin.
    571pts
11. 11
    Ulysses S. Grant

    Union commander who won the Civil War, then served two terms as president, and has been on the fifty-dollar note for over a century.
    571pts
12. 12
    Theodore Roosevelt

    Trust-busting president, conservationist and Nobel Peace laureate who sits on Mount Rushmore but on no banknote.
    571pts
13. 13
    Neil Armstrong

    First person to walk on the Moon, and the face of American technical ambition.
    571pts
14. 14
    Abraham Lincoln

    On the five-dollar bill, and on the penny from 1909 until the Mint struck its last one in November 2025.
    571pts
15. 15
    Eleanor Roosevelt

    Redefined the role of First Lady and chaired the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    467pts
16. 16
    Wilma Mankiller

    First woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, a finalist in the 2015 Women on 20s vote and on a 2022 quarter.
    467pts
17. 17
    Dwight D. Eisenhower

    Supreme Allied Commander and two-term president who appeared on the dollar coin from 1971 to 1978.
    343pts
18. 18
    Ronald Reagan

    Took 20 percent in the 2014 CBS News currency poll, close behind Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
    343pts
19. 19
    Alice Paul

    Suffragist who wrote the Equal Rights Amendment and was named in 2016 for the back of a redesigned ten-dollar note.
    343pts
20. 20
    Thomas Jefferson

    On the two-dollar bill and the nickel, and the author of the Declaration.
    343pts
21. 21
    Rosa Parks

    Her refusal to move seats in Montgomery in 1955 set the bus boycott in motion.
    343pts
22. 22
    Sojourner Truth

    Abolitionist and women's rights speaker named in 2016 among the suffragists planned for the back of a redesigned ten-dollar note.
    343pts
23. 23
    Frederick Douglass

    Escaped slavery to become the most formidable abolitionist orator and writer in America.
    0pts
24. 24
    John F. Kennedy

    Has been on the half-dollar since 1964 and led a 2014 CBS News poll on who should appear on US currency.
    0pts
25. 25
    Sacagawea

    Guided the Lewis and Clark expedition and appears on the golden dollar coin.
    0pts

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