The nine year old girl who wrote to President Obama to ask why there weren’t any women on US currency has got her reply – and in more ways than one.
Sofia, a third grader from Massachusetts, was studying important American historical figures in her class, when it occurred to her that there weren’t any women on US currency.
“I was studying Ann Hutchinson, who stood up for women’s rights,” she says. “Almost everyone who chose a boy, on their poster they had pictures of different dollar bills or coins with their person on it. So I noticed, why don’t women have coins or dollar bills with their faces on it?”
This didn’t sit right with her, so she did the only sensible thing to do.
She wrote a letter to the President.
“I just came home from school and said, ‘I need to write to the president,’” she explained in her interview with Time.
It was a quick and concise letter, and it got right to the point.
Sofia’s letter to President Obama
“Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to know why there aren’t any women on the dollars/coins for the United States. I think there should be women on the dollars/coins for the United States, because if there [were] no women, there wouldn’t be men. Also, there are many women that could be on dollars/coins for the United States, because of the important things they have done.
Please write back,
Sofia.”
Along with her letter, Sofia attached a list of women she thought were suitable for the position, including: Anne Hutchinson, Rosa Parks, Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Harriet Tubman.
She posted the letter, and soon after forgot about it. And she didn’t remember again until her father pointed out that Mr Obama had mentioned it in a speech. As well as acknowledging it publically, the President also wrote a reply to Sofia’s letter, promising to do something about the matter, after which he invited her to the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll.
Not satisfied with personal correspondence with the President, Sofia became the junior ambassador for the campaign to put a woman on the $20 note, replacing Andrew Jackson.
The campaign’s $20 note candidates include Shirley Chrisholm, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Margaret Sanger, and Harriet Tubman.
But despite Sofia’s initial vote for Ann Hutchinson, her money is on Rosa Parks.
“What she did was really important,” she says. “If it wasn’t for her, we’d still be segregated today.”
And her advice for igniting change?
“Write a letter to somebody important,” she says, “because something could happen and it could actually change.”
