The U.S. Mint rolled out the first edition of its American Women Quarters Program on Monday with coins featuring the likeness of renowned poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
The quarters, manufactured at facilities in Philadelphia and Denver, feature Angelou with outstretched arms on the obverse (tails) side of the coin. Designed by Emily Damstra and sculpted by Craig Campbell, the quarter also features a bird in flight and a rising sun, two images “inspired by [Angelou’s] poetry and symbolic of the way she lived,” the Mint wrote in a statement.
Inscribed on the quarter are the phrases “United States of America,” “Maya Angelou,” “Quarter Dollar” and “e pluribus unum,” which is Latin for “out of many, one.”
The obverse (heads) side of the coin features a portrait of George Washington, which will be included on all quarters in the series.
“It is my honor to present our Nation’s first circulating coins dedicated to celebrating American women and their contributions to American history,” U.S. Mint deputy director Ventris C. Gibson wrote in a statement. “Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments being celebrated throughout this historic coin program. Maya Angelou, featured on the reverse of this first coin in the series, used words to inspire and uplift.”
Angelou, who died in 2014 at the age of 86, was known for her personal memoirs that told of her struggles with and triumphs over racism and trauma. Her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which chronicled her life up until she was 17 years old, garnered international acclaim and numerous awards.
Angelou would go on to fight in the civil rights movement alongside the likes of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1993 became the first poet to recite their work at a presidential inauguration in over three decades.
Under the American Women Quarters Program, the Mint will issue five new quarters each year from 2022 through 2025, each featuring a woman who made contributions in the fields of civil rights, environment, suffrage, science and more.
Other honorees that will be featured in quarters this year include Dr. Sally Ride, the first female astronaut; Wilma Mankiller, a Native American activist and the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; Nina Otero-Warren, the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools; and Anna May Wong, who is considered to be among the first Chinese-American movie stars in Hollywood to gain international acclaim.
The quarters featuring Maya Angelou will be available upon request at select banks.
The American Women Quarters Program was made possible thanks to the passage of H.R. 1923 in 2020, also dubbed the "Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020," which requires those featured on the quarters represent "ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds." Those featured on the coins are chosen in coordination with the Smithsonian Institution's American Women’s History Initiative, the National Women’s History Museum and the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus.
"[Angelou] is exactly the type of leader I had in mind when Senator Fischer, Representative Lee and I wrote our bipartisan legislation to create a series of quarters honoring the contributions of American women," the legislation's cosponsor, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-N.V., wrote in a statement. "This coin will ensure generations of Americans learn about Maya Angelou’s books and poetry that spoke to the lived experience of Black women.”