The image of the iconic singer Celia Cruz will be stamped on a quarter in the US as part of the program American Women’s Quarterswith which the US Mint remembers notable women in the country’s history.
“All of the honored women have lived remarkable and multifaceted lives, and have made a significant impact on our nation in their own unique way,” Mint Director Ventris C. Gibson said in a statement released Thursday.
ICYMI—The @usmint has named the late Representative Patsy Takemoto Mink as a 2024 honoree for the American Women Quarters Program. Designs for the coins will be released in mid-2023.
Learn more: https://t.co/t4XjbzdZ2m https://t.co/aWsgM19M5N
— White House Initiative on AA and NHPIs (@WHIAANHPI) February 2, 2023
Celia Cruz, the note highlights, “was a Cuban-American singer, cultural icon and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century.”
“Known as ‘The Queen of Salsa,’ Cruz’s many honors and awards include five Grammy Awards, a National Medal of Arts, and a posthumous Grammy for Lifetime Achievement.”
Together with Celia Cruz, the institution created since 1792, will honor Patsy Takemoto Mink, “the first black woman to serve in Congress”, where she “fought for gender and racial equality, affordable child care and bilingual education, on all with the passage of Title IX, which was later renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Educational Opportunity Act.”
He will also remember Civil War-era surgeon Mary Edwards Walker, “advocate for women’s rights and abolitionist”; to the poet, writer and activist Pauli Murray, “a staunch defender of civil rights, fighting against racial and sexual discrimination” and to the also writer and composer Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin.
Zitkala-Ša was a political activist for Native Americans’ right to United States citizenship and other civil rights that had long been denied to them. She “left her South Dakota home on the Yankton reservation at age eight to attend a boarding school run by white missionaries, where her native culture and traditions were prohibited.”
The American Women Quarters program began last year and will run through 2025.
“Women pioneered change during their lives, not giving in to the status quo imparted during their lives. By honoring these pioneering women, the Mint continues to connect America through coins that are like little works of art in your pocket,” Gibson said.
The primary purpose of the Mint is to manufacture and distribute circulating coins, precious metals, collectible coins, and national medals to meet the needs of the United States. It is also in charge of the physical custody and protection of the country’s gold and silver assets, according to the website of the Treasury Department.
