×
You Can Now Get a Quarter With Poet Maya Angelou on It | She Is the First Black Woman to Appear on a Coin
ADVERTISEMENT

You Can Now Get a Quarter With Poet Maya Angelou on It | She Is the First Black Woman to Appear on a Coin

The U.S. Mint will be honoring 20 trailblazing women on a new series of quarters, kicking off the series with Maya Angelou as part of the American Women Quarters Program.

Cover Image Source: Twitter | United States Mint

Maya Angelou, one of the most powerful poets and a civil rights activist, is making history yet again. She is the first Black woman to be featured on a quarter-dollar, according to PEOPLE

In 1993, Angelou became the first African-American woman to recite poetry at a presidential inauguration. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President Barack Obama in 2010. Angelou died at the age of 86 in 2014.

ADVERTISEMENT

The U.S. Mint will be honoring 20 trailblazing women on a new series of quarters, kicking off the series with Angelou as part of the American Women Quarters Program. The coin was released in a bid to pay tribute to Black rights activists, as part of the American Women Quarters Program, the United States Mint shared on its site, adding that the bureau has already started shipping the coin. "Beginning in 2022 and continuing through 2025, the Mint will issue five quarters in each of these years."

ADVERTISEMENT

Image Source: United States Mint

 

 

"These circulating quarters honoring Maya Angelou are manufactured at the Mint facilities in Philadelphia and Denver. Coins featuring additional honorees will begin shipping later this year and through 2025," reads the press release. 

ADVERTISEMENT

“It is my honor to present our Nation’s first circulating coins dedicated to celebrating American women and their contributions to American history,” said Mint Deputy Director Ventris C. Gibson. “Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments being celebrated throughout this historic coin program. Maya Angelou, featured on the reverse of this first coin in the series, used words to inspire and uplift.”

ADVERTISEMENT



 

 

“Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country — what we value, and how we’ve progressed as a society,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said. “I’m very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of America’s most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou,” he added per The Washington Post.

ADVERTISEMENT

Maya Angelou is depicted on the coin with her arms uplifted, a bird in flight and a rising sun behind her—“images inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived,” according to the U.S. Mint. In addition to “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” and “MAYA ANGELOU,” the inscriptions on the coin includes the phrase “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” Latin for “out of many, one,” a phrase also on the national seal.

ADVERTISEMENT

While these new quarters still feature George Washington on the heads side, Angelou appears on the tails side in a position. The coin is designed by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) Artist Emily Damstra and sculpted by United States Mint Medallic Artist Craig A. Campbell.

The additional honorees in 2022 are physicist and first woman astronaut Dr. Sally Ride; Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and an activist for Native American and women’s rights; Nina Otero-Warren, a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools; and Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, who achieved international success despite racism and discrimination.

ADVERTISEMENT



 

References:

https://people.com/human-interest/maya-angelou-quarter-out-now/

https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-begins-shipping-first-american-women-quarters-program-coins

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/11/maya-angelou-us-quarter-coin-mint/

Cover Image Source: Twitter | United States Mint