African-American becomes first woman on US $20 bill

19th century abolitionist, Harriet Tubman will appear on the front of the $20 bill, replacing former President Andrew Jackson and becoming the first woman featured on United States paper currently in modern times.
The decision is the latest chapter in a 10-month old controversy that erupted that Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary tried to address gender imbalance on U.S. currency notes, after women's group advocated for gender diversity on U.S. currency.

Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland in the early 1820s. She married a free black man, John Tubman, while still enslaved, but later escaped to freedom in 1849. After her escape, she returned to slave states at least a dozen times to help others find their freedom, using a network of safe houses and secret routes known as the Underground Railroad. Many made their way to Canada, as 1850's Fugitive Slave Law made life in the Northern United States complicated before full emancipation.

Tubman worked as a spy for the Union Army, helped abolitionist John Brown find recruits for his famous Harpers Ferry raid, and after the Civil War lived out the end of her life in Auburn, New York, remarrying, adopting a daughter and doing work for women's suffrage. She died in 1913.

Credits: New York Times, howstuffworks.com, Guardian Newspapers Nigeria