American women quarters program
New Quarters announced 2021 will be released 2022
The American Women Quarters program is just around the bend, with release sometime next year. The Mint has announced three additional women that will be honored on the quarters in 2022 along with Dr. Sally Ride and Maya Angelou.
The program is set to run for 4 years, with up to five different reverse designs each year. The coins will feature reverse designs honoring the accomplishments and contributions of prominent, ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse American women.
The obverse of the new quarters will still feature George Washington, but the design will be changed to distinguish them from the already circulating quarters.
The Secretary of the Treasury chooses the women who will be featured on the coins with consultation from the Smithsonian Institution’s American Women’s History Initiative, the National Women’s History Museum, and the Congressional Bipartisan Women’s Caucus.
Who will be featured on the new quarters?
Here are the first five women chosen to be honored on the coins in 2022:
Maya Angelou
Submitted Designs for the coin featuring Maya Angelou
Best known for her autobiographies about her childhood and early adult life, Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights. She was born on April 4, 1928. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Movement and had worked with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
She was widely respected as a spokesperson for Black People and women, whose works have been considered a defense of Black culture.
Dr. Sally Ride
Submitted Designs for the coin featuring Dr. Sally Ride
Born May 26, 1951, Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, and the youngest American astronaut, traveling to space at the age of 32. She joined NASA in 1978, and completed two flights aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger before leaving NASA in 1987.
She later served on the committees that investigated the Challenger, and the Columbia Space Shuttle disasters, and was the only person to serve on both committees.
A few years after leaving NASA, she became a Professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the California Space Institute.
Dr. Sally Ride passed away in 2012. She was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom after her death, in a ceremony at the White House on November 20, 2013, her life partner Tam O’Shaugnessy was presented with the medal.
Dr. Sally Ride is the earliest space traveler to be recognized as LGBT.
Anna May Wong
Submitted Designs for the coin featuring Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, and the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition, despite racism, and discrimination.
Born January 3, 1905 in Los Angeles, California, Wong reached stardom by the age of 19. She was one of the first to embrace the flapper style, and in the 1920 and 1930s, she was considered one of the top fashion icons of the day.
Anna May Wong struggled with being cast in stereotypical, racially insensitive roles in Hollywood, and in the late 1920s she headed to Europe.
There she starred in several plays and films, most notably of those was “Picadilly”.
She took some time off from film during World War II and devoted her time and her money to help the Chinese cause against Japan. Some time after the war in the 1950s she returned to the silver screen in a few television shows.
In 1951 she made history with her T.V. show “The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong”. This was the first ever U.S. television show to feature an Asian American in the starring lead.
Wong died of a heart attack in 1961 at the age of 56.
Wilma Mankiller
Submitted Designs for the Coin Featuring Wilma Mankiller
Wilma Mankiller, the sixth of eleven children born to Charley Mankiller and Clara Irene Sitton, was the first Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and the first woman elected as chief of a major Native tribe.
"We thank the U.S. Mint for recognizing Wilma and the other recipients for such an honor," Charlie Soap (Mankiller's husband) told Indian Country Today. "Wilma was a humble, spiritual, great leader whose leadership was not only for Cherokee people but for all women and races. The real value of this coin is the inspiration it brings to Indian people and women everywhere."
She dedicated her life to activism, and fighting for Native American’s and Women’s rights.
Adelina Otero-Warren
Submitted Designs for the Coin Featuring Adelina Otero-Warren
Adelina Otero-Warren was the first woman to run for U.S. Congress, and the first female superintendent of public schools in Santa Fe. She was a leader in New Mexico’s Suffrage movement and she used her political connections to lobby the state legislature to ratify the 19th Amendment.
According to the National Parks Service Adelina insisted that suffrage literature be published in both English and Spanish, in order to reach the widest audience.
She held the position of superintendent for 12 years, from 1917 to 1929.
