The Citizens Coin Advisory Committee (CCAC), who advises the Secretary of the Treasury on coin and medal design proposals, held a meeting on April 18. The committee discussed and voted on candidate designs for the following 2024 coins and medals: the Harriet Tubman commemorative coin program, the Greatest Generation commemorative coin program, a Congressional gold medal honoring the Six Triple Eight Battalion, and a Congressional gold medal honoring the servicemembers who perished in Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021.
Following is background on the honorees and descriptions of the CCAC-recommended designs.
Harriet Tubman Commemorative Coin Program
The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Commemorative Coin Act recognizes the bicentennial of Harriet Tubman’s birth. The act instructs that designs shall be emblematic of her legacy as an abolitionist.
Harriet Tubman was born enslaved as Araminta “Minty” Ross on a Maryland plantation circa 1822. Tubman freed herself from slavery in the fall of 1849 with the help of the Underground Railroad network. Though she had found freedom in Pennsylvania, she braved the perilous journey repeatedly, returning to Maryland 13 times over the next decade to personally guide about 70 more people from slavery to freedom, and provided instructions to approximately 70 additional people who found their way to freedom on their own. Despite laws that put her life at risk and made the journey increasingly dangerous and long, Tubman stated at a women’s suffrage convention in 1896 that she
