The Modern World

Living Persons Depicted on Modern United States Coins

- David Schwager

Why don’t real people of the present day appear on United States notes and coins? Many other nations show their monarchs and chief executives, especially on paper money. The answer comes from the early years of federal paper currency. Some of the first notes, issued during the Civil War, bore the portraits of then-president Abraham Lincoln and his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. Spencer Clark, head of the National Currency Bureau, the government agency responsible for printing notes, decided that if his bosses put their faces on $1 and $5 bills, they would not mind if he put his own image on a humble five-cent note. He was wrong, and Congress enacted a law stating that United States coins and currency could not bear the images of living people.

Most new coins, however, have authorizing legislation, and sometimes this legislation supersedes the old law and puts a person of the present day on a commemorative coin. In other cases, the particulars of the authorization, the depiction on the coin, or the identity of the people depicted are vague enough that living people make their way onto the finished products.

Before the modern period, this happened four times with classic commemorative half dollars: 1921 Alabama, 1926 Sesquicentennial, 1936 Arkansas-Robinson, and 1936 Lynchburg. In each case, the legal specifications put a specific, current political leader onto a coin.