Don’t you want magnanimous people with engineering degrees who would seriously consider qualifying to teach highschool physics?
LOL
Leave it to Dopers to skew the whole Chuck Norris meme in favor of a more worthy historical figure. 
I would say that Grant really doesn’t belong on the $50. Sure, he was an important figure in the Civil War, but his presidency is largely considered a failure. I’d also be against Reagan, not because I think he was a bad president, but because I don’t think it’s been long enough to see how historians will remember him since so many people were alive and still remember parts of his presidency; maybe in another 20-30 years we might have more historical perspective. I also think that there are other more worthy people.
As mentioned upthread, if we’re going to stick with the idea of presidents, I think Teddy Rooseveldt deserves a nod and is probably the best regarded President amongst those whom have not already been on currency, and is long enough ago that he should be minimally divisive. I think the OP’s idea of John Adams is okay, but he certainly wouldn’t be among my first choices
I also like the idea of MLK is reasonable. I think very few people would have any problem with that, and I think it would be a nice change to ditch the genocidal Jackson from the $20 (or the xenophobic FDR from the Dime) in favor of someone who carried a positive message of racial equality.
I also think there’s plenty of other non-presidents who could be worth being on the bill. For instance, there’s plenty of other important founding fathers who often don’t get much credit because they were never president. Along those lines, I think Thomas Edison, as mentioned upthread, is a possibility but would probably need more support to be elevated up to the level of the others, like maybe him on the front and the Wright brothers on the back as sort of an American innovation theme.
I wouldn’t mind Grant if his portrait represented the general that saved the Union, but BEP makes it clear that it is PRESIDENT Grant on the bill. You know, the president whose administration was so corrupt that he had the only cabinet member ever impeached. Why not put Harding on the $50 with a panorama of Teapot Dome on the back? He Richard Nixon is dead, why not him?
People who deserve a place on the bill
- Theodore Roosevelt - Should be on every bill and tattooed on every American. IIRC some foreign prince once pissed him off and TR tore the prince’s heart out of his chest and he ate it as the dying prince watched.
- Ronald Reagan - Won the Cold War.
- John Marshall - Made SCOTUS respectable
- Benjamin Harrison - IMO, started the trend towards a modern executive branch. Laid the groundwork for the U.S. to enter the 20th century economically
- Earl Warren - For good or bad, he defined judicial activism for over half a century (even continuing today)
Millard Fillmore. As comptroller of New York he controlled the flow and production of bank notes for his state. And basically the modern National Bank system was his design. Time he gets some recognition for all that.
Really?!
Just looking at the currencies I have right here…
Euro-zone, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Syria, South Africa, Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Maldives, Russia, Seychelles, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Hong Kong.
None have people on them.
A lot of those are Muslim countries who you would not expect to put human images on their currency.
So some are saying.
Which foreign country do you come from?
And the winner is:
Think of the revenue when the $20 rights are auctioned off! What was it, about 25 years ago that California started selling auto license lists because “it had a fiduciary duty to the taxpayer to monetize that value”? It would be shameful not to seize this revenue opportunity! What’s the alternative? Class warfare? Tax the rich?
Jack Bauer.
Put Martin Kove on all currency and change the latin jive on the back to “fear does not exist in this dojo”
It’s got to be Martin Luther King. Seriously, it took over 200 years to get one African-American on regular-issue money (the recent DC quarter which featured Duke Ellington)–the time seems right for King to be on something.
Is there any way we can squeeze this whole thing in?
If not Alfred E. Newman then no one, although the mention of Shatner, a Canadian, has some merit.
No, not until nanotechnology advances to the point where the bill can be a fully interactive experience, as it should be.
Martin Luther King, Theodore Roosevelt, or Harry Truman would all be good choices.
Teddy Roosevelt is owned by nobody, the bill set itself aflame because it was the only way to assure he was no man’s bitch. The bill, of course, survived, but they didn’t know that.
Why is Abraham Lincoln singing “Mammy”?
Why do Washington and Lincoln get two faces? It seems some qualified people are being short changed.
Nyuk-nyuk.
No so. Booker T Washington was on the half dollar.
From Wikipedia:
On April 7, 1940, Washington became the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp. The first coin to feature an African American was the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar that was minted by the United States from 1946 to 1951. He was also depicted on a U.S. Half Dollar from 1951-1954.