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V28 2025 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 28, Number 50, 2025, Article 25

The Trump administration jettisoned a plan to honor the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage and the civil-rights movement on quarters for the nation's 250th birthday.

Those themes were part of a proposed five-quarter special series that went through years of debate and design but was never officially announced by the U.S. Mint. They were replaced with images inspired by the Mayflower Compact, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address. Instead of Frederick Douglass, a women's suffrage marcher and Ruby Bridges desegregating an elementary school, the Mint's special quarters for 2026 will feature Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and James Madison, along with pilgrims glimpsing America's shores.

The final designs, unveiled late Wednesday by the Mint, come ahead of an even more controversial decision that Treasury officials have teased but not finalized: a $1 coin featuring President Trump.

Trump has criticized museums and cultural institutions for being "woke" and said they were too focused on negative parts of American history. On Thursday, in explaining the decision, U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach told Fox News Digital that the prior administration was too "focused on DEI and Critical Race Theory policies."

"The designs on these historic coins depict the story of America's journey toward a ‘more perfect union,' and celebrate America's defining ideals of liberty," acting Mint Director Kristie McNally said in a statement.

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a group of coin experts, artists and bipartisan political appointees, consulted historians, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and others. The law requires that committee to review designs, and after a multiyear effort, it settled on five themes for the five quarters: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, abolition, suffrage and civil rights.

"We're trying to be very sensitive to how people will interpret the themes and designs of the coins," said Dennis Tucker, a coin expert who worked on the project before leaving the coin advisory panel last year. "They're much more than just money. They're things that kids are going to be looking at and grown-ups are going to be looking at."

In October 2024, for the abolition quarter, the panel picked a Douglass image on the obverse, or front, and a reverse design showing a shackled hand and a fist breaking free. The suffrage coin showed a marcher with a "votes for women" sign. The civil-rights coin highlighted Bridges on the front and a scene from a civil-rights march on the reverse with the words "we shall overcome."

The Commission of Fine Arts, a separate panel, made its own recommendations within the same themes, disagreeing with some of the coin committee's choices. Under federal law, that arts panel must be consulted on new coin designs; Trump fired all of its members this year and no members are currently listed on its website.

The new dime is nice enough, although the angry eagle looks more like one of Tyranny than Liberty. The quarter obverses are dull; the reverses are OK but not particularly inspiring, although I guess I like the perspective view of Independence Hall. The rejected designs have more character and are better balanced.

To me, they far better depict the story of America's journey toward a ‘more perfect union.' The first amendment protection of free speech is the bedrock right that drives all others, allowing all citizens to discuss the issues of the day and quarrel over proposed solutions until a consensus emerges. That process is painfully slow and can take generations, but it does grind slowly toward better (if still imperfect) solutions. The union may never reach perfection in anyone's eyes, but it does progress amid backsliding and fits and starts toward a more perfect union. -Editor