A U.S. Mint official said, “We boldly look to the future by casting Liberty in a new light, as an African-American woman.”

Photo courtesy National Park Service Some D.C. residents may have been disappointed to see Duke Ellington end up on the D.C. state quarter instead of Frederick Douglass, but they’ll soon be put at ease. The United States Mint has announced that the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site will be featured on a special quarter of its own, the Examiner reports. Douglass’s Cedar Hill estate, located at 1411 W St. SE in Anacostia, will represent…

We may not yet be a state, but we’ve finally got our own commemorative quarter. The U.S. Mint today rolled out the District’s own 25-cent piece as part of the popular 50 State Quarters Program. Bearing the image of jazz legend Duke Ellington, the quarter was years in the making, requiring an act of Congress and a pitched battle between city officials and the Mint over whether “Taxation without Representation” would appear on the…

The District’s commemorative quarter is set to hit the streets on January 26, and will bear the image of Duke Ellington, DCist has learned. Though Greg Hernandez, spokesperson for the U.S. Mint’s 50 State Quarters Program, was tight-lipped about the final design of the quarter (the official release date for the design of the D.C. quarter is Monday, December 15), three different people who answered the phone at the Mint’s main press office today confirmed…

Voting rights activists and members of the D.C. delegation to the Democratic National Convention held a small rally in front of the U.S. Mint in Denver this morning, but the Mint’s location on the edge of downtown made for a not particularly visible event among the throng of other convention-related activities going on here. Rather few pedestrians passed by to receive the wooden nickels that voting rights advocacy group DC Vote had planned to give…

DC Vote just sent around an email to all their supporters to remind them of their planned event outside the U.S. Mint in downtown Denver. The rally (protest? gathering?) is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. From the announcement:We will host a peaceful rally outside the Denver Mint and pass out wooden coins to the public because the mint rejected the DC government’s request to imprint the words “taxation without representation” on DC’s quarters and…

Barring any unwelcome intrusions, sometime in 2009 the U.S. Mint could roll out an official D.C. quarter bearing the city’s slogan, “Taxation Without Representation,” to great fanfare. But considering that unwelcome intrusions are part and parcel of living in the District, we’re not yet holding our breath. Yesterday Mayor Adrian Fenty formally submitted the District’s three proposals for its own quarter to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, arguing in a memo that the voting…