Page 6- The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday, October 15, 1998
Some say redesigned $2O bill
looks like funny money
By Paul Farhi
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON
funny money, or play money, or, as
one bank executive thought upon first
encountering it, “some kind of bank
promotion
The new $2O bill is genuine le
gal tender, as solid as a sawbuck can
be. But call it the shock of the new.
As the radically redesigned twenty
begins to trickle out of automated
teller machines, it looks to many eyes
as odd as a three-dollar bill.
April Crews, who works for a
nonprofit youth organization in Wash
ington, gets her first glimpse of the
new bill’s clashing type fonts, its luxu
riant fields of white space, its new, in
your-face portrait of Andrew Jackson
and almost physically recoils. "Oh, it
looks awful,” she declares. “What
have they done?”
George Medina, a file analyst at
the Export-Import Bank, offers a
short, unambiguous design review:
“Fake-looking."
They - and you - might as well
get used to it. The twenty is the third
U.S. bill to be redesigned in the past
two years - the comparatively rare
$ 100 and $5O bills tame f' r ‘.t - out it's
destined to become the most familiar
repackaging since New Coke. The
twenty, after all, is the second-most
widely used U.S. note, after the $1
bill, which means that virtually every
American will see the new version
within a few months
The U.S. Treasury began adding
millions of the new $2O bills to the
banking system late last month.
Within six months, Treasury officials
said, nearly a quarter of all $2O bills
in circulation will be the new kind;
within two years, the classic twenties,
Excavation reveals
slaves as entrepreneurs
By Linda Wheeler
The Washington Post
An archaeological team exca
vating an old James River plantation
in Virginia has found evidence that
some enslaved Africans partially
supported their families with their
own gardens and livestock and that
they hunted for game and fished the
river. They became part of entrepre
neurial America, bartering or buy
ing dishes, beads and children’s toys.
The work of College of William
and Mary archaeologist Tom
Higgins, supported by similar finds
at other Virginia plantations, shat
ters the long-held belief that all
slaves were helpless, dependent
people who could do little to care
for themselves.
"We know now that the people
who lived here took the initiative to
make their condition better,”
Higgins said as he walked along a
soybean field where 100 or more
slaves had lived on the 2,000-acre
Wilton plantation east of Richmond.
"They were creative. They found
ways to take care of themselves un
der a brutal and oppressive system.”
Higgins bases his conclusions
on several discoveries made by a
team of archaeologists that has been
exploring an acre of the farmland
since April. The Virginia Depart
ment of Transportation hired them
o document the area, as required by
aw, before construction begins on
l nine-mile, four-lane state road
through the former plantation.
Tuesday, Virginia officials will
stand on the site of the slave quar
ters to announce the start of the road
project, Higgins said.
Sunday, Higgins spread out a
drawn-to-scale map of the area as he
sat cross-legged on a new gravel
road laid for the ceremony. He
pointed to the location of barracks
style housing and adjoining fenced
areas, appropriate for penned ani
mals or garden crops.
Some slaves were given guns to
all but unchanged since they were in
troduced during the Coolidge admin
istration, will mostly be a memory,
though some of the old bills are likely
to be around for decades to come.
Local banks and merchants re
port a few puzzled looks from cus
tomers when they hand over the new
bill. That’s easy to understand; even
the pros are sometimes startled. Ken
Darby, a spokesman for First Union
Bank, recalled that when he withdrew
some money last week from his ATM
he momentarily wasn’t sure what he
No, it’s not
was getting.
“I must admit when (the cash)
first came out I thought it was some
kind of bank promotion,” Darby said.
Treasury officials recognize the
enormity of the change, and they
aren’t particularly troubled by a few
knocks on their new creation.
“Some people like the way it
looks, some people don’t,” said Roger
Anderson, a deputy assistant secretary
of the Treasury. “It’s natural. Anytime
you change something that’s been
around for 70 years, it takes a while
to get used to it.”
Besides, Anderson said, “we
didn ’ t do any of this for aesthetic rea-
The Treasury figures that what
ever the ungainly new bill may give
up in form, it compensates for in func
tion. That’s because the new design
is all about foiling counterfeiters, who
copy the $2O bill more than any other
denomination.
Some of the anti-counterfeiting
features of the new bill are downright
interactive. For example, the “.20” in
the lower right-hand comer of the face
side that is green when you view it
head-on shifts to black when the angle
is different. When the bill is held up
to the light, Jackson appears as a
hunt wildlife, and although Higgins
found no state government permits
issued to the African workers of
Wilton, he did find pieces of 18th
century guns buried in the heavy
clay along with animal and fish
bones.
Within the boundaries of what
had been large, single-room build
ings dating from the 1700 s, Higgins
found multiple rectangular holes that
had been lined with brick or wood.
Similar spaces had been found at the
restored Carter Grove plantation
near Williamsburg and at Monticello
near Charlottesville, he said.
At Wilton, he found five such
spaces under what had been a slave
house that burned to the ground
about 1790. So sudden was the de
struction that the log walls caved in,
the twig and mud chimneys col
lapsed and the five rectangular holes
were buried under the debris. In
these spaces, which some historians
call root cellars or hidy-holes,
Higgins found an impressive collec
tion of things that would have been
considered special to occupants of
the house.
On the gravel, he spread out
some of his favorite items: the metal
part of an oversize hoe, two heavy
clothes irons, earth-tone beads, stone
marbles, a dozen common pins and
a metal thimble.
He held up a reconstructed,
china chamber pot with graceful
blue flowers, blackened at the top
by the fire.
“If this had been trash, it would
have been broken into small pieces,”
he said. “It would have been
trampled and crushed.”
Higgins’s theory about the use
of the underground storage areas as
places to keep important, personal
possessions is supported by the di
rector of archaeology at Monticello,
Fraser Neiman.
boxes,” he said,
Neiman said that the “boxes”
were first documented about 20
“I like to call them safe-deposit
World and Nation
ghostly watermark on the far right
side, and a tiny security thread read
ing “USA TWENTY” and featuring
a little American flag become visible.
The oversized and oddly con
trasting “20” on the back of the bill
was put there to help visually im
paired people recognize the bill, as
well as to help make it stand out in
“low-light situations,” such as in a cab
or a bar, Anderson said.
All well and good, but some de
sign experts suggest that the govern
ment could have done that and still
made a graphically pleasing impres-
“In my opinion, it truly reflects
the establishment - it has a conserva
tive, puritanical quality,” said Franz
Werner, a professor of design at the
Rhode Island School of Design.
The redesign involved input from
the Secret Service, Bureau of Engrav
ing, Federal Reserve and Treasury
officials, and took several years to
complete, the Treasury’s Anderson
said.
Despite the long development
process, some organizations are still
scrambling to adjust. The U.S. Postal
Service, one of the nation’s largest
operators of vending machines, snio
its 12.000 stamp-vending machines
that take 3>20 bills can’t recognize the
new bill and will have to be retrofit
ted.
The Postal Service doesn’t know
how much it will cost to upgrade its
equipment, but it plans to hire a com
pany to begin the job sometime next
month, spokeswoman Monica Hand
said. Eventually, all 38,000 post of
fice vending machines will have to be
overhauled because Treasury plans to
redesign the $lO, $5 and $1 bills over
the next few years.
years ago and that historians have
had several theories about their use.
One theory holds that they were used
in the practice of an African custom;
another says they were places to hide
items stolen from the plantation
owner.
He discounts both. The “boxes,”
have been found only in Virginia and
not in other slaveholding states.
They have been found in connection
with large, single-room slave quar
ters, but not at excavations of
smaller, family-size houses.
He said people living commu
nally needed secure places to put
their possessions, such as extra food,
cash or purchased items. They dis
appeared from use about 1800 when
Virginia plantation owners built in
dividual houses that offered security
for personal possessions, he said.
The opulent Wilton mansion
had eight rooms paneled entirely in
elaborately cut pine. The furnishings
were from France and England.
The Marquis de Lafayette made
Wilton his headquarters during the
Revolutionary War, and George
Washington was a frequent visitor.
Built between 1750 and 1753, the
Georgian house was home to Will
iam Randolph 111, his wife Anne
Carter Harrison and their eight chil
dren.
Eventually, high debts forced
the sale of the plantation in 1859 to
buyers outside the family. By 1932,
it was used to store hay. Then the
National Society of The Colonial
Dames of America purchased
Wilton, had it dismantled, moved
and reconstructed in west Richmond
as its headquarters.
It is open to the public for tours.
Wilton House Museum admin
istrator Sylvia Evans said the group
would like to exhibit the artifacts
found by the Higgins team as a way
to acknowledge the role played by
the slaves at the plantation.
“These are the silent voices of
history,” she said.
Violent
the rise
By Gilbert A. Lewthwaite
The Baltimore Sun
TSHILAMBA, South Africa -
Violet Dangale, 42, was driven from
her home 30 months ago by relatives
and neighbors who accused her of
being a witch growing rich from the
work of zombies, as the “living dead”
are known in that line of work.
Now penniless and in fear for her
life, she hides in this remote village
of Northern Province in a tent given
to her by the local police.
Francina Sebatsana, 75, and
Desia Mamafa, 55, suffered a worse
fate in December. They were burned
to death on pyres of wood in the vil
lage of Wydhoek, in the same prov
ince, after also being denounced ?s
witches. Eleven men, ages 21 to 50,
will be tried on murder charges in
November.
Since 1990, more than 2,000
cases of witchcraft-related violence,
including 577 killings, have been re
ported in this remote, northern cor
ner of South Africa.
This is not the only area that has
seen such violence. This month, in
the heartland province of Guateng,
four men were arrested after the
house of Nokonleko Shingane, an
other alleged witch, was set afire.
Phumele Ntombele-Nzimande
of the Commission on Gender Equal
ity said the violence associated with
witch hunts has become “a national
scourge.”
A five-day conference of gov
ernment and social agencies held last
week in Thohoyandou, capital of
Northern Province, called for a na
tional educational campaign to
counter popular superstition.
The conference rejected outlaw
ing witchcraft, which has millions of
followers in South Africa. It favored
tolerating the belief, or superstition,
but not allowing it to impinge on the
basic rights of others.
“In this new South Africa, there
is no need seriously for a law to sup
press witchcraft,” said Barney
Pityana of the South African Human
Rights Commission. “We need to say
to our people, ‘You are free to prac
tice and belong, but you are not free
to violate someone else’s rights.’
“At the end of the day, what is
more important to me is not whether
you believe in witchcraft or n0t.... It
is whether your belief in witchcraft
leads you to violate my rights.”
The conference urged registra
tion of traditional healers, who are
often involved in starting witch hunts
by identifying alleged witches. The
proposal would subject them to a
Officials launch aggressive Megan’s Law enforcement
By Josh Meyer
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - If you think
it’s unsettling to get a letter from the
Internal Revenue Service, imagine
opening an envelope and reading that
a violent sexual predator is living
down the street from you and your
children.
In the coming weeks, the county
Board of Supervisors has decided, that
is exactly what is going to happen to
thousands of Los Angeles County
residents who live on the same block
as a “high risk,” violent sex offender.
The supervisors have directed
Sheriff Sherman Block to make such
formal notifications in the county’s
unincorporated areas, home to about
1 million people. Supporters and crit
ics say that Los Angeles County’s new
policy is among the nation’s most
aggressive applications of Megan’s
Law, named after a New Jersey girl
killed by a violent and repeat sex of
fender.
California law has long required
about 65,000 sex offenders to regis
ter with their local law enforcement
agencies. The state version of
Megan’s Law, enacted two years ago,
allows the public access to informa
tion about whether convicted child
molesters are living nearby.
But few, if any, large police de
partments actively notify all residents
living near such high-risk offenders,
according to Mike Van Winkle, the
witch hunts
in South Africa
code of conduct,
“People often come to me want
ing me to point out who among them
is a witch, and I always refuse,” said
Credo Mutwah, a leading traditional
healer. “A ‘nanga’ (traditional healer)
doesn’t need to point out people as
witches to earn income. A good
nanga makes money by strengthen
ing people’s homes against harm ...
by giving people medicine to rid
people of sickness.”
Nowhere, perhaps, are the an
cient superstition and mystery that
surround witchcraft more deeply en
trenched than in South Africa’s
Northern Province. There, among the
poorly educated rural residents, tra
ditional healers and clairvoyants
claiming supernatural powers hold
broad sway. And hunger, poverty and
unemployment can create jealousies
that can quickly turn to anger and
vengeance.
“People believe that a person
can, through some sort of remote
control, influence a driver of a ve
hicle to sleep and be involved in an
accident, a pregnant mother in hos
pital to have a miscarriage, or a per
son anywhere to be unfortunate in
some way or other,” said a 1996 re
port by the Crime Information Man
agement Center on witchcraft in
Northern Province.
But the violence is not limited
to witch hunts. “Witches” have con
ducted ritual killings.
In pursuit of magical power,
Noledzane Ernest Mabuda allegedly
killed his 11-month-old baby, plan
ning to use the body parts as “muti,”
or ingredients for bewitching com
pounds and potions, according to the
charges against him in Venda High
Court.
He is charged with forcing his
wife, Helen, to take part in the ritual
killing in February and drink the
baby’s blood. She has been granted
immunity in return for testifying
against him. His trial is expected to
end this week.
As a nanga in the village of
Vondwe, Ndweleni Collbert
Ramagoma used to make a lot of
money by helping the sick and dis
tressed.
He said he invoked only good
spirits able to cure ailments such as
female infertility. With the fees he
earned, he could afford four wives.
He owned a large house, land, four
cars and a tractor. He used the trac
tor to help his neighbors cultivate
their fields.
Today, all but one of his wives
have left him. His house and vehicles
have been burned because, he says,
Megan’s Law specialist for the state
Attorney General’s Office. He said he
didn’t know of any city or county that
does targeted mailings, as Los Ange
les plans to do.
The board voted 4 to 0 last Tues
day to approve the motion by Super
visor Gloria Molina. Molina says she
hopes the 88 cities in the county, in
cluding Los Angeles, follow the
county’s lead, and that the rest of the
state follows suit. The board also in
structed the County Counsel and the
Sheriff to begin networking with other
law enforcement agencies to achieve
that.
“We are talking about ... a very
high-risk kind of individual; someone
with multiple convictions, who really
has a problem,” says Molina. “There’s
no doubt this is aggressive, it is pro
active.” Some have hailed the board’s
action as bold leadership on a critical
and controversial issue of public
safety.
Block, who is locked in a tough
battle for re-election, is especially
pleased, calling the change “an en
hancement to our approach to the law”
that costs little in the way of effort or
money.
His departmental point man on
Megan’s Law, Cmdr. William
Mangan, says the letters will be go
ing out within a month to everyone
on the same “100 block" as a high
risk offender, encouraging them to go
to their local Sheriff’s station to get
more information. The offenders’ ad-
a neighbor’s son kept his father
awake one night chanting the name
“Ramagoma.”
The father accused Ramagoma
of bewitching the boy. Ramagoma
appealed for support from the local
leader, who turned against him and
organized a witch hunt.
A few days later, a crowd
marched on his house. Crouching in
side, he heard someone say, “We will
finish up with him today.” He fled as
they burned his property.
Several miles away on another
night, Thari William Masithi also
watched his house go up in flames.
It was the best house in Mpego, the
village of his birth. He built it for
$25,000 from industrial compensa
tion for a back injury he suffered
while working for a Johannesburg
building contractor.
“There was no one who had a
house such as this one,” he said.
“Even the traditional leader didn’t
have a house like this one.”
A crowd of youths approached
and accused him of practicing witch
craft by using zombies to acquire his
property.
The youths burned the house,
killing Masithi’s mother, who was
inside. He and his wife fled with their
six children. The youths who set the
fire were arrested, tried and sen
tenced to three to five years in prison.
Violet Dangale’s main accuser
was her uncle. He first accused her
father of using zombies to enrich
himself. Then he turned on her, sug
gesting that she enjoyed her share of
the family’s wealth through witch
craft.
“We had our own water,” she
said. “We didn't have to go down to
the river. When we wanted meat, we
didn’t go to the butcher. We slaugh
tered one of our own cattle. That’s
why people were so jealous.”
As the accusations and threats
grew stronger, the Dangale family
fled their homes in Dzimauli.
"They said I was a witch: I don’t
know anything about witchcraft,” she
said. “I don’t believe in zombies.
Since I was born, I never saw a zom
bie.”
Dangale, her mother and her
four children sought refuge in the
Mutale police station. They camped
in the police compound for almost
two years before moving to
Tshilamba in February. She started
to build a brick house beside the tent
but ran out of money.
Her old house is standing, but
she is afraid to return to it. “They
could bum the house down while I’m
inside and kill me.”
dress will not be made available
Even so, “it won’t take too many
neighbors talking to each other to fig
ure out who it is,” Van Winkle says
of the sex offenders.
That’s one reason critics are al
ready beginning the describe the
board’s vote as politically motivated
and, ultimately, counterproductive.
By notifying communities of
child molesters’ whereabouts, critics
predict, authorities are creating a situ
ation in which most sex offenders -
as history has shown - will seek cover
elsewhere rather than risk vigilantism
and harassment by angry parents in
their neighborhoods.
The Los Angeles Police Depart
ment and some other police forces, in
fact, have decided not to participate
in the mailings. “Eventually, if they’re
forced to move from city to city, they
will not register, and we won’t know
where they are,” said Capt. Stuart
Maislin, commanding officer of the
LAPD’s Juvenile Division.
Block acknowledges that the new
policy undoubtedly will “out” some
sexual predators within their commu
nities, and lead them to seek cover
elsewhere. And he agrees they might
not register there, either. But he says
the penalties for not re-registering
could send many offenders back to
prison, and that the threat of further
incarceration will keep the number of
such scofflaws to a minimum.