Abolitionist Harriet Tubman To Grace $20 Bill

Abolitionist Harriet Tubman will replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew also revealed US founding father Alexander Hamilton would remain on the front of the $10 bill.

Tubman, an escaped slave, abolitionist and leader of the so-called Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape to freedom during the 1850s, was the popular choice in an online poll.

Jackson, the nation's seventh president and founder of the Democratic Party, fell from favour because he helped drive Native American tribes from the southeastern US.

Critics of the slave-holding president known as Old Hickory also pointed out that his inclusion on any bill was ironic, given his opposition to paper currency.

Tubman will be the first African-American woman to feature on US currency and the first woman to do so in more than a century.

George Washington's wife, Martha, appeared on a $1 silver certificate in the 1880s.

The Native American Pocahontas appeared on the back of a $20 bill a couple of decades earlier.

Fans of Hamilton, who was the nation's first Treasury Secretary, were boosted by the interest generated by hit Broadway musical Hamilton.

He will remain on the $10 bill, and the Treasury building on the back of the note will be replaced with leaders of the women's suffrage movement.

The $5 bill will also be changed.

The illustration of the Lincoln Memorial on the back will include images of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, Eleanor Roosevelt and African-American opera singer Marian Anderson.

An online group, Women on 20s, said it was encouraged that Mr Lew had responded to its campaign to have a woman on a banknote by 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of American women gaining the right to vote.

Hillary Clinton, the Democrat seeking to become the country's first female president, tweeted: "A woman, a leader, and a freedom fighter.

"I can't think of a better choice for the $20 bill than Harriet Tubman."