2024-P Zitkala-Ša American Women Quarter : A Collector’s Guide

By Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker for CoinWeek Notes ….
 

The Zitkála-Šá American Ladies Quarter was launched on October 21, 2024, the fifteenth coin within the sequence and the fifth coin within the 20-coin American Ladies Quarters program’s third yr. Approved by Public Law 116-330 (PDF link), the sequence started in 2022 and continues another yr by 2025, 5 new reverse designs launched every year to commemorate the achievements and legacies of traditionally and culturally vital girls. It follows the profitable 50 State Quarters and America the Stunning Nationwide Park Quarters applications and the Washington Crossing the Delaware one-year reverse sort of 2021.

On the time of this writing, the Zitkála-Šá Quarter has solely begun to succeed in banks for distribution to native companies or for collectors to purchase unopened rolls. Sales for rolls and bags directly from the Mint will open on October 28. The desk under reveals the obtainable circulation-strike product choices and their preliminary retail costs.

The 100-coin luggage every have a product restrict of 8,250 and a family order restrict of 10 per on the primary day of gross sales. The 2-roll set of Zitkala-Ša Quarter cash from the Philadelphia and Denver mints (80 cash whole) has a product restrict of 6,000 and the three-roll set of business-strike cash from Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco (120 cash whole) has a product restrict of 16,625 – most of which has already been accounted for by way of the Mint’s subscription program. Each roll units have a restrict of three per family on the primary day.

The Life and Legacy of Zitkála-Šá

Zitkála-Šá, whose identify means “Crimson Hen” in Lakota, was additionally identified by the English identify Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. As a author, she helped introduce the tales of her individuals to the English-speaking public. As a musician and composer, she wrote the primary American Indian opera, The Solar Dance Opera, in 1913. As a civil rights advocate, Zitkála-Šá fought for the suffrage and United States citizenship of all Native Individuals.

Zitkála-Šá was born on the South Dakota Yankton reservation on February 22, 1876, and grew up there till she left for White’s Indiana Handbook Labor Institute, a Quaker boarding faculty. Whereas she loved studying and enjoying the violin, she nonetheless keenly felt the oppression of her tradition throughout the three years she attended the non secular faculty. After just a few years again at dwelling, the place she now started to really feel alienated, Zitkála-Šá purposefully returned to White’s to finish her schooling, studying sufficient music to function a substitute music trainer earlier than she graduated in 1895.

She then went to Earlham Faculty, additionally in Indiana, on a scholarship however was unable to graduate. However, she was capable of additional her musical research on the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and taught music to Native youngsters on the Carlisle Indian Industrial College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1901, Zitkála-Šá returned to the Yankton reservation to search out potential college students for the Carlisle College and was shocked to see the toll that the 1887 Dawes Act had taken on her individuals. Refusing to simply accept the assimilationist insurance policies of her faculty, she was fired from her place and located her technique to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the place she labored as a clerk.

Quickly after, she would return to her dwelling reservation and acquire the tales that will be printed as Outdated Indian Legends (1901). Zitkála-Šá additionally married Raymond Talephause Bonnin in 1902, whence she obtained her Anglicized identify. Her writing profession started in earnest throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, with common articles in Atlantic Month-to-month and Harper’s Month-to-month. Certainly one of her most well-known statements towards the compelled assimilation of the time was the piece “Why I Am a Pagan”, printed in Atlantic Month-to-month in 1902.

After Raymond’s service in World Struggle I, the 2 moved to Washington, D.C., the place she served because the nationwide secretary for the Society of American Indians (SAI). Whereas she had all the time advocated for the safety of Native tradition and rights, her writing took an much more political flip within the nation’s capital. Zitkála-Šá is thought for co-writing Oklahoma’s Poor Wealthy Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the 5 Civilized Tribes, Legalized Theft in 1923, which investigated the fraud and homicide of Native Individuals that adopted the invention of oil on their lands in Oklahoma within the first quarter of the twentieth century. The 2023 movie Killers of the Flower Moon dramatized related occasions.

In 1910, Zitkála-Šá and Utah music professor William Hanson started composing The Solar Dance Opera. She wrote the songs and libretto and Hanson created the music based mostly on conventional music she carried out. It must be famous that the Solar Dance as a Native observe was prohibited by the Federal Authorities right now.

Persevering with to work for Native American and girls’s rights for the remainder of her life, Zitkála-Šá died on January 26, 1938.

2024-P Zitkala-Ša Quarter Design

Obverse:

The American Ladies Quarters characteristic the effigy of George Washington designed by sculptor Laura Gardin Fraser in 1931. Washington’s head faces to the appropriate. LIBERTY wraps across the high of the design, with the underside of the letters BER barely obstructed by the highest of the top. The motto IN GOD WE TRUST seems in skinny tall letters to the left of Washington’s head. The date and mintmark seem on the decrease proper facet of the design, tucked underneath Washington’s chin. Gardin Fraser’s initials LGF are discovered within the truncation of Washington’s neck.

Reverse:

Zitkála-Šá stands on the appropriate, wearing a conventional Yankton Sioux method. She holds an open guide in her left hand. Behind her is the rising solar with prolonged rays; whereas this motif is considerably stylized, it isn’t radically completely different from related depictions on basic U.S. cash. A cardinal, symbolic of Zitkála-Šá identify (“Crimson Hen”), flies in entrance of the solar, and a row of diamond shapes on their sides marks the horizon. The legend UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM run clockwise alongside the rim on the high. Within the area to the left of Zitkala-Ša and beneath the dawn is the inscription AUTHOR ACTIVIST COMPOSER in three traces. The denomination 25 CENTS is under that, and the identify ZITKALA-ŠA runs counterclockwise alongside the rim on the backside of the quarter. Designer Don Everhart’s cursive initials DE are between the denomination and her identify, on the nook of the truncation of her portrait. Medallic Artist Renata Gordon engraved Everhart’s design; her initials RE are between ZITKALA-ŠA and E PLURIBUS UNUM on the underside proper of the rim.

Under is a video from the United States Mint discussing the 2024-P American Ladies Zitkala-Ša Quarter:

Edge:

The sting of the 2024-P Zitkala-Ša Quarter is reeded with 119 reeds.

Designers

Laura Gardin Fraser was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1889. After receiving an schooling on the Columbia College and later on the Artwork College students League of New York, the place she studied underneath her future husband James Earle Fraser. Laura Gardin Fraser died in 1966. In 2022, the portrait of George Washington that she submitted for the Washington Quarter changed John Flanagan’s long-running portrait (submitted in the identical competitors) at some stage in the American Ladies Quarters Program.

Don Everhart joined the USA Mint in 2004 after an extended and profitable profession as a sculptor and designer of medals. He retired in 2017 and now participates within the Mint’s Creative Infusion Program (AIP) (View Designer’s Profile).

A graduate of the College of the Arts in Philadelphia, Mint Medallic Artist Renata Gordon created a number of designs for the First Partner and America the Stunning Quarters applications (View Designer’s Profile).

2024-P Zitkála-Šá American Ladies Quarter Coin Specs

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