Quarter featuring disability rights activist Stacey Park Milbern released

Disability rights activist Stacey Park Milbern made history Monday as the first Korean American featured on U.S. currency with the release of her commemorative quarter.

About the quarter: The U.S. Mint has shipped the Milbern quarters to Federal Reserve Banks and coin terminals nationwide, with plans to produce 300 million to 700 million of it. The quarter is the 19th design in the four-year American Women Quarters Program, which launched in 2022 and celebrates five prominent women each year.

The coin’s reverse side shows Milbern addressing an audience, with the U.S. Mint describing the design as depicting her with “one hand near her trach while her right hand faces palm up, a gesture meant to evoke a genuine exchange of ideas and the building of allyship.” It is expected to be used in everyday transactions in the next 50 years.

An enduring legacy: Milbern, whose Korean name was Park Ji-hye, was born in Seoul in 1987 to Korean mother Jean and American serviceman father Joel. Diagnosed with congenital muscular dystrophy, she began advocating as a teenager and helped pass a 2007 North Carolina law requiring disability history education in public high schools.

After moving to the Bay Area in 2011, she helped advance the disability justice movement and established the Disability Justice Culture Club, promoting intersectional advocacy for disabled people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ communities. Former President Barack Obama had also appointed her to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities in 2014. While undergoing treatment for kidney cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped organize mask and supply distribution to vulnerable communities. She died on May 19, 2020, her 33rd birthday, following surgical complications.