The U.S. Mint has announced that astronaut Sally Ride and poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelo will be remembered as the first two women in the U.S. legal tender quarter. They are the first to be honored as part of the U.S. Mint’s 4-year American Women’s Quarters program that will celebrate the achievements of women who “made significant contributions to the nation.” The quarters shown to Dr. Ride and Angelo will be distributed from the beginning of 2022, and although the designs have not been finalized, a few possible designs are being considered, which can be seen here for the ride and for Angelo here.
U.S. Peppermint expects 20 new quarters to recognize women between next year and 2025 and earn five new coins every 12 months. Dr. Sally Ride was an American astronaut and physicist. She was the first American woman in space and the third woman overall. He joined NASA in 1976 and twice went on space shuttle missions in 1983 and 1986, managing the shuttle’s robotic arm, launching satellites into space. He died in 2012. Maya Angelou was a writer, poet, and civil rights activist whose autobiographical book I Know Wade the Caged Bird Sings was famous among many others.
He worked with both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and was one of the most influential voices for human rights and black rights in America before his death in 2014. She was the first African American and the first woman to recite a poem on behalf of President Bill Clinton at the inauguration of the US President in 1993. In the United States, there are only three definitions of coins accepted as legal tender, including women: the Sacagawea dollar, Susan B. Anthony dollar, and Helen Keller Alabama State Quarter. This new currency will be the first nationwide legal tender quarter featuring women. The US Mint was set up in 1792.
“Contributions are not limited to suffrage, civil rights, extinction, government, humanities, science, space and fine arts, but can come from a wide range of fields. Respected women will come from a variety of ethnic, racial and geographical backgrounds,” the US Mint said. The only condition that characterizes the coin is that the person must die.
