Since its debut in 2022, the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program has issued special quarters each year featuring women who shaped the country. Past honorees include writer Maya Angelou, astronaut Sally Ride, and actor Anna May Wong.
In 2024, the program will issue new quarters honoring five women: Pauli Murray, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Mary Edwards Walker, Celia Cruz, and Zitkala-Ša. These women’s accomplishments were as diverse as America itself. They were activists, authors, physicians, and politicians. Yet, one common purpose united their work: They broke down the barriers.
Historically, U.S. currency has been the domain of men, but the U.S. Mint is ever so slightly adjusting the gender balance this year with new quarters depicting American women.
It wasn’t until 1979 that the Susan B. Anthony Dollar became the first U.S. circulating coin to feature an American woman, and her successors were at first far and few between. The Sacagawea Golden Dollar Coin was issued in 2000 and Helen Keller appeared on Alabama’s state quarter in 2003. In 2022, though, the Mint got busy. The bureau’s American Women Quarters Program became its first circulating coin program dedicated exclusively to women. The four-year series, which has already featured depictions of Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, and Sally Ride, will have introduced 20 new quarters into circulation that show women by the time the program wraps in 2025.
This year’s designs include depictions of the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor. Cruz, the Cuban-American salsa singer, is shown on her quarter with her signature catchphrase “¡AZÚCAR!,” or Spanish for “sugar!” while Walker, a Civil War-era surgeon, is shown in hers wearing her medal.
Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink (D-Hawaii), the first woman of color to serve in Congress, was a coauthor of Title IX, and she’s depicted in her quarter design wearing a lei with documents representing her signature legislation in front of the U.S. Capitol.
Reverend Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist and lawyer who cofounded the National Organization for Women, became the first Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1977. Her quarter shows her portrait inside the letters “HOPE” and features a line from her poetry, “A song in a weary throat.”
The quarter for Zitkala-Ša shows the Native American writer and activist wearing a traditional Yankton Sioux dress holding a book. The bird in the distance represents The Sun Dance, the first opera by a Native American, which opened in Vernal, Utah, in 1913.
The first quarter of the series this year will be Murray’s, which is scheduled to be available beginning Feb. 1. The obverse or heads portion of the coins all depict George Washington as sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser for Washington’s 200th birthday and the text “Liberty” and “In God We Trust.”
The final quarters, coming out in 2025, will depict journalist Ida B. Wells, Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, astronomer Vera Rubin, tennis player Althea Gibson, and Stacey Park Milbern, who was an activist for people with disabilities.
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