European vs. American Currency: Who Are Our National Heroes?

My friend Katie, who is currently working on her Fulbright in Estonia, sent a message today to a few of her friends (including me) asking, "If you had to pick a politician, two writers, a musician, an athlete, a social leader, and someone you think was just absolutely intrinsic in the formation of the American identity to honor on our dollar bills, whom would you pick?" She's writing an essay comparing US and Estonian national identities and how they've formed -- a question that seems to have been inspired by the difference in who the 2 countries have decided to place on their currency. Check out her discussion on the topic on her blog.

I decided that I had more than just a little bit to say on the topic, and that I finally needed to get back to writing on my blog (maybe being in charge of my company's blog at work is also having an effect) -- so I'm going to post my answer here :)

First, since Katie has posted who is pictured on Estonian currency, maybe I should list who is on Ukrainian currency, just to see how similar other Eastern European countries may be, versus how different the U.S. is:

The Ukrainian "hryvna" was first printed in '92 and issued in '96, which makes sense since Ukraine was one of the last countries to break away from the Soviet Union. On the hryvna, we have Vladimir I of Kiev -- pictured above (who converted to Christiany in 988 and proceeded to baptize all of Kievan Rus'), Yaroslav the Wise (the Grand Prince who reigned between 1019 and 1054 and brought Rus' to the pinnacle of it's cultural and military  power), Bohdan Khmelnystsy (a Cossack hetman who led an uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1648 and is widely regarded in Ukraine as the father of the nation), Ivan Mazepa (a Cossack hetman who sided with Sweden in 1709 in it's battle against Imperial Russia because the latter was showing complete disregard for Ukrainian land and lives), Ivan Franko (a late-19th-century writer who is believed to be the founder of the socialist movement in western Ukraine), Mykhailo Hrushevsky (an activist and politician, head of the Central Rada from 1917 to 1918, and leader of the pre-revolutionary Ukrainian national movement), Taras Shevchenko (a 19th-century poet who made modern Ukrainian literature and language what it is), Lesya Ukrainka (a late-19th-century poet, writer, and activist -- the most famous female writer in Ukrainian literature), and Hryhoriy Skvoroda (an 18th-century philosopher who was only recently added to the currency because he resided in the Russian Empire and his contributions were to both nations).

Hopefully everyone reading this knows who is on American currency and I don't have to summarize it. You can also go to Katie's blog for a quick reference.

So, why the difference? I would say that there are two reasons for the vast difference in whom Americans and Eastern Europeans have chosen as worthy of being pictured on their currency:

1. The first is obvious:  The United States is a country full of immigrants -- a country that was founded completely by immigrants. If you go far enough back, you're left with Europeans and Native Americans, so you're limited to a much shorter segment of history than most countries are. Do you just set 1776 as a beginning point and cut off anyone from before then? There's a reason I included dates when I was listing who was on Ukrainian currency. The United States didn't even exist when many of those individuals were alive. And even after that, do you disqualify anyone born abroad? How do you decided whether they were actually "American?"
2. The second reason is that we we were never really taken over by another country -- never went through that epic struggle for freedom during which national heroes usually emerge. You can argue that Americans, too, had to fight for their independence, but that's vastly different. They won their independence from their founders, who were never really imposing a language or culture upon them, and who were not brutal rulers. And after we won, that was pretty much the end of that story. In Eastern Europe, there are honored national heroes spanning centuries who fought to defend their nation from conquerors, occupiers, totalitarian dictators, etc. I think that this is the reason that many of the people who first came to mind when I thought about Katie question were African-American -- because that's a part of our society that DID have to go through that struggle for freedom. It's in times of real suffering and hardship that the most memorable heroes arise, and Americans as a whole simply did not go through all that many hardships (please don't try to cite things like the Great Depression here, since it hardly compares to the starving/extermination/enslavement/etc of a whole people).

This list of people needs to be created not just by answering each question separately, I think, but as a whole. Otherwise, like I said above, it would largely consists of leaders of the Civil Rights movement. So I did my best to make it well-rounded, but it nevertheless obviously reflects that sentiment:

Thomas Jefferson or George Washington (politician)

Mark Twain - or Clemens, if you prefer (writer)

Maya Angelou (writer/poet)

Louis Armstrong - because what's more American than Jazz (musician)

Jesse Owens or Michael Jordan (athlete)

Martin Luther King, Jr. (social leader)

Thomas Edison (other)