The morning after the nation’s largest snowfall was different. The giant snowstorm had settled over the United States for the last 48 hours, leaving nearly every major American city draped in white. As the snow melted on the gushy streets and the main roads of the cities across the nation, they quickly began to fill up with their regular amount of Tuesday morning traffic. On this day, the first day of February, there was a sense that something was different, but most people simply attributed the feeling to the snowy landscape and the extended weekend. At least the never-ending month of January was finally gone.
In Atlanta, as the first wave of commuters made their way to work, several of them made a stop at their favorite coffee shops, fast-food restaurants, and gas stations where they began noticing that their credit and debit cards weren't working at any of the establishments. The problem didn’t appear to be an internet issue or a power shortage. Cash registers were fully functional as employees were entering in transactions and totaling up sales. Frustrated customers began calling their banks and the customer service hotlines on their cards. Hold times were growing longer and longer due to a national outage.
At one local gas station amidst the increasing confusion, a construction worker made eye contact with an incoming cashier to let him know that he was paying with cash. The cashier’s eyes directed the man around the stagnant line to the open register. After requesting a box of the Marlboro Menthol Blue cigarettes, he - somewhat relieved that he had avoided the confusion - lifted a thick wad of cash out of his pocket and began to unfold the bills while glancing at his total. His eyes searched for a twenty dollar bill and as he took a glimpse at the crisp olive green billfold, he quickly took a second glance. His eyebrows furrowed and his bearded face turned red. The bill had no numbers on it, and the image was different. It wasn’t that of a President, the portrait of a deceased white male callously staring back at him, but the image had been replaced with the beautifully dark round face of a black woman with small glowing eyes, full lips, her hair pulled back under a bonnet, and wooden earrings that dangled two inches below her ear lobes, just above her jaw-line.
In shock, the construction worker dropped the entire wad of cash, the bills splashing on the floor and scattering in all directions up to five feet away from him. A few of the customers around him rushed to help him gather his money, but when they glanced at the bills, they experienced the same shock. “These bills have no numbers!” one man exclaimed. “Who is this woman on the bill?”, a woman asked. Another man followed her, saying “Who are these people on the bills?” holding up several bills with different images of more black men and women. Slightly chuckling, the cashier looked at the construction worker and asked, “Where did you get this money from?”
By this time, banks around the nation were continuing to experience high call volumes from frustrated customers unable to use their cards. ATM’s were inoperative as the unmarked bills with new faces seemingly could not be processed by the machines. Banks refused to process checks and long lines started forming outside of local banks with customers looking to withdraw their cash for a state of emergency, but bank tellers were unable to make the transactions due to the unknown dollar amounts on the bills. The US Mint issued a press release on the circulation of coins and paper currency throughout the nation. The statement said that their presses had been compromised and an investigation would be pending. The Department of Homeland Security began investigating whether a cyber-attack had occurred that interfered with electronic transactions and the printing presses. Thus far, it had been reported that no cash had been stolen or replaced with counterfeit bills and account balances within financial institutions had not been tampered with.
Amidst the confusion and increasing frenzy at the gas station, a young black woman walked into the convenience store with her seven-year old daughter. The woman wore braids with a hint of burgundy running through them that matched her burgundy scrubs. Her daughter wore a pink down puffer coat covering her private school uniform beneath it. Just after walking through the automatic doors of the convenience store, the little girl picked up one of the bills lying on the floor, looked at it and said excitedly, “Look, Mommy, it’s Phillis Wheatley!” Her mother immediately retorted by telling her to put the bill back on the ground because, “who knows where it’s been?”, but when her eye caught the number “one hundred” reappearing in the corners of the bill, she grabbed it out of her daughter’s hand even quicker than the little girl could pick it up. In disbelief and curiosity she looked at the image on the front of the bill and then held it up to the light examining its validity. Beneath the fluorescent illumination, these words appeared on the bill just next to Phillis’ image,
But how presumptuous shall we hope to find
Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind
While yet o’ deed ungenerous they disgrace
And hold in bondage Afric: blameless race
Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers
Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.
“Was this for real?” the woman thought. But as her eyes drifted back down from the fluorescent light, they met the eyes of the other customers who were staring intently at her and her daughter in amazement. In their hands, she saw more of the unmarked bills with black portraits, and she looked back at the redesigned one hundred dollar bill in her hand, stunned. What seemed like minutes of silence pervaded the store, while upbeat pop music from the eighties played lightly in the background. The construction worker, still kneeling on the floor, locked eyes with the little girl, extended several bills towards her, and then asked if she might help him identify the black figures. Her mother, now moving herself just in front of her daughter looked back at the man, and then again at the other customers and softly replied, “Wait.”