The US Mint announced that a new quarter of famed poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou and other leading American women officially began shipping to banks on Monday. Angelou is the first black woman to enter the quarter.
Maya Angelou Design is the first quarter in the "American Women's Quarter Program", a four-year program that includes U.S. women's quarters. History will include coins featuring prominent women.
Other honorees include astronaut Sally Ride; actress Anna May Wong; suffragist and politician Nina Otero-Warren; and Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation's first female head of state. According to the mint, coins featuring other honorees will be shipped this year by 2025.
Angelou, who passed away in 2014 at the age of 86, received many distinctions. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama and won the Sahitya Puraskar (an honorary National Book Award). In 1992, she became the first black woman (and second-poet) to write and perform a poem at the 1992 presidential inauguration. He also received over 30 honorary degrees and published over 30 bestselling works.
“Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of the achievements being celebrated in this historic coin event. Maya Angelou illustrated on the back of this first coin in the series, using words to inspire and uplift ,” Mint Deputy Director Ventrice C Gibson said in a statement.
Angelo depicts the writer and poet on the "tail" side of the quarter coin, his arms raised up. Behind him is a bird and the rising sun. The Mint says those paintings are "inspired by his poetry and symbolize his way of life."
On the "head" side is a portrait of George Washington by a female sculptor, first recommended to the Mint back in 1932. At the time, it selected a design by John Flanagan to depict Washington.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen celebrated the new coins, praising how much America has made "as a society."
The first coin of the American Women Quarters™ Program is here—the Maya Angelou Quarter! Learn about honoree Maya Angelou and #HerQuarter in our press release at https://t.co/yYzGJpXQDD. Look for it in your change. @USTreasury @smithsonian @womenshistory @DrMayaAngelou @WCPInst pic.twitter.com/GVUpcnbszq
— United States Mint (@usmint) January 10, 2022
"I am extremely proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of America's most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou," Yellen said in a separate statement.
Several lawmakers, such as Democrat Barbara Lee of California and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, lauded the new coin's release on Monday.
"The phenomenal women who have shaped American history have gone unrecognized for far too long - especially women of color," Lee said in a tweet. "Proud to lead this bill to honor their legacies."
Lee was influential in introducing the Circulating Collective Coin Redesign Act of 2020; The Act passed in January 2021 and essentially paved the way for the design of new commemorative coins.