A look inside the U.S. Mint's creation of a quarter celebrating Ida B. Wells

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

John Yang: Finally tonight for Women’s History Month, we take a look at a special series of quarters honoring notable American women. This is the final year of the program. And one of the coins for 2025 features journalist and activist Ida B. Wells. We went to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia to watch hers being made.

John Yang (voice-over): At the US Mint in Philadelphia, this is what they mean when they talk about making money. This machine turns out more than $187 in quarters every 60 seconds. These coins honor Ida B. Wells, the pioneering journalist and civil rights activist. It’s one of the last in the Mint’s four-year American Women quarter series.

John Yang: What happens in this area?

Clayton Crotty, U.S. Mint at Philadelphia: This is the first step.

John Yang (voice-over): Production supervisor Clayton Crotty explains the process.

Clayton Crotty: So 80 percent of each coil gets turned into coins.

John Yang (voice-over): The coils weigh as much as 11,000 pounds each. A machine punches out discs, the blank canvas for the coins. A press stamps the design onto them. What’s called striking.

John Yang: When the Mint began in 1792, it took three years to produce a million coins. Now, 30 minutes.

John Yang (voice-over): About 350 million Ida B. Wells quarters are expected to go into circulation. As an investigative journalist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Wells raised awareness of the vicious violence against blacks in the era of lynching.

In 2020, she was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for that work. As an activist, she pressed for a federal anti-lynching law, something that didn’t become a reality until 2022, 91 years after her death. Wells was also at the forefront of efforts against segregated schools and for the vote for women.

Phebe Hemphill, U.S. Mint sculptor: Well, this would have been my dream job and I did land my dream job.

John Yang: Really?

Phebe Hemphill: Yes.

John Yang (voice-over): Mint sculptor Phoebe Hemphill had the challenge of translating that life history onto a canvas less than an inch in diameter.

Phebe Hemphill The design goes through the committees in Washington and if they choose the design and it happens to be my design, then I get to design and sculpt it. Yeah.

John Yang: So for instance, with the Ida B. Wells quarter, did you submit a design?

Phebe Hemphill: I did. It was not chosen.

John Yang: Is that a little bit of a disappointment?

Phebe Hemphill: Kind of, yeah. But I got to be humble with my expectations there.

John Yang (voice-over): Even though her design didn’t win, she was chosen to sculpt the one that did. It was in her studio above the production floor that she transformed the two dimensional drawing into a three dimensional sculpture.

Phebe Hemphill: That’s the main challenge in making a coin, is to get as much sculpture out of it as you can, given the constraint of that low relief.

John Yang (voice-over): She’s one of the few mint sculptors who still uses both traditional clay and plaster techniques and modern digital tools.

Phebe Hemphill: The designs that we try to come up with usually have important elements in it for the person’s story. Try to give an indication of little bit about their background.

Dan Duster, Ida B. Wells great grandson: It’s surreal and heartwarming at the same time.

John Yang (voice-over): Dan Duster, Ida B. Wells great grandson, appreciates the results.

Dan Duster: The detail on it, John, is actually intricate and amazing. And so we talked about her hand positioning the brooch that’s on the coin, which is a feather, to reflect her commitment to journalism. So, yeah, it was a very involved thing.

John Yang (voice-over): He helped pick the winning design and now uses the quarter whenever he can.

Dan Duster: Normally, I use a credit card, right? So I’ve been paying for cash with a lot of things, trying to see if I can get a quarter. So I did stumble upon it.

John Yang (voice-over): Smithsonian staff researched and picked the women who appear on the coins.

Elizabeth Babcock, Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum: This is tangible. History is tangible. It’s in your hand.

John Yang (voice-over): Elizabeth Babcock is director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

Elizabeth Babcock: The idea there was that we wanted to end up with a set of women who really represent all the many ways that women in our country have contributed, whether it’s in the arts, whether it’s in stem, whether it’s in health and medicine. I think we ended up with a really great set.

John Yang (voice-over): The only woman depicted on coins had been Lady Liberty until the Susan B. Anthony dollar in 1979. The Sacajawea dollar followed in 2000. In 2021, Congress established the American Women Quarters Program. Some of those honored are household names. Eleanor Roosevelt, Sally Ride, Maya Angelou. Others are less well known.

Elizabeth Babcock: You can look at the beautiful quarter itself and you can ask questions about, who is this woman? How did she contribute to American society and culture? Why is she important to history? It’s such an amazing way that’s accessible to all Americans to learn about women in the United States and through history.

John Yang (voice-over): Mint worker Frank Perkins was around when the Susan B. Anthony dollars were minted. He’s been here since he was 18 years old.

John Yang: 50 years. Is there something special about working at the Mint?

Frank Perkins, Mint worker: Yeah. Being a part of history.

John Yang (voice-over): Now, helps mentor the newest generation of Mint employees. I get them to understand that once you come into the building, you become a part of a machine. OK? What you do affects the next person, OK? So you got to have honor and camaraderie together.

John Yang (voice-over): That’s one of the lessons Dan Duster hopes people will take from Ida B. Wells accomplishments.

Dan Duster: When she saw a problem, I think most of us say, man, somebody needs to do something about that. She would say, somebody needs to do something and I’m going to do it.

John Yang (voice-over): That determination now celebrated on a U.S. quarter.

Dan Duster: It shouldn’t be that big of a deal in one perspective, right. Is that it should be more normal that females are on currency. Another one is Ida B. Wells is on a quarter and she’s honored. So we’re very happy about that.