Petition to replace President Jackson with MLK on $20 bill falls short

MARQUETTE — We have an update on the effort by a Northern Michigan University assistant professor to make a major change to a piece of U.S. currency.

Dr. Martin Reinhardt teaches Native American studies. He wrote a petition to the White House recently to remove President Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replace him with Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We ended up getting about 2,000 signatures on our petition,” Dr. Reinhardt said. “Then we had a major stall and we passed our time; our time lapsed. So, our petition wasn’t successful, but I do think that it was successful in getting the word out.”

If 100,000 people had signed it by January 6th, President Obama would have had the power to act on it.

Reinhardt says the signatures indicate that some people believe President Jackson’s presence on the twenty is a relic of a racially insensitive culture and should be changed.