Contributed by Scott Lipscomb
The late Maya Angelou will be one of the first women on the new quarters the US Mint is releasing starting 2022. The Mint will be releasing special quarters featuring spectacular women from 2022 to 2025 American Women Quarters Program.
Angelou was a best selling poet and author best known for her poem “Still I Rise” and books such as “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.” However she also was a civil rights activist with Dr.King and Malcom X, Hollywood’s first black women director, and a composer among many other things Black Enterprise wrote on their article.
Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton 2000. While in 2010 she earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Angelou, who passed away in 2014, is regarded not only as one of the best poets ever but one of the best poets and literary figures. Her work is studied and taught in many high schools and universities across the country.
“As authorized by Public Law 116-330—the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020—the Mint will issue circulating and numismatic quarter-dollar coins with reverse (tails) designs emblematic of the accomplishments and contributions of a prominent American woman beginning in January 2022. Contributions may come from a wide spectrum of fields including, but not limited to, suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts. The women honored will come from ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds. As the Public Law requires that no living person be featured in the coin designs, all of the women honored must be deceased. The Mint will annually issue up to five different reverse designs over the four-year period beginning in 2022 and continuing through 2025.” said the US Mint via their website.
Along with Angelou, Dr.Sally Ride, the first American woman to visit space, will be honored on the first set of coins
To help select the next honorees the Mint has a survey available.
The coins will start circulating in January of 2022.
