Today in Black History: Azie Taylor Morton, U.S. Treasurer
The only African American on U.S. Treasury bills
Issue #1059 Today In Black History Monday, August 10, 2026
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Azie Taylor Morton’s signature sat on American currency for three years, yet her name remains one of the least recognized in U.S. financial history. Born February 1, 1936, at St. John Colony, a freed-slave settlement near Dale, Texas, Morton never knew her father, and her mother was deaf. Her hometown had no high school open to Black students, so she was sent to Austin’s Texas Blind, Deaf and Orphan School, a charity institution for Black children, to complete her education. She graduated at sixteen and enrolled at Huston-Tillotson College, a historically Black college in Austin, earning a bachelor’s degree in commercial education, cum laude, in 1956.
From the Classroom to Washington
Morton’s early career combined teaching with public service. She taught at a school for delinquent girls before becoming assistant to the president of her alma mater. Her move into government came in 1961, when she was appointed to President John F. Kennedy’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, the body tasked with enforcing nondiscrimination in federal hiring. Over the following decade, she held a series of posts in Washington, including staff assistant to the U.S. House Committee on the District of Columbia. She also built a career in Democratic Party politics, serving as special assistant to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1971 to 1976.
Appointment as Treasurer
On September 12, 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Morton the 36th Treasurer of the United States. She held the position until January 20, 1981, and remains the only African American ever to serve in that office. The role, distinct from the Secretary of the Treasury, requires the Treasurer’s signature alongside the Secretary’s on all Federal Reserve notes before they can be issued as legal tender. For nearly four years, Morton’s signature appeared on the nation’s paper currency, a quiet but permanent mark on American history carried in millions of wallets without most people ever knowing her story.
A Life of Global Service
Morton’s public service extended well beyond the Treasury. She represented the United States on the American delegation to Rome for the 1978 enthronement of Pope John Paul II, chaired the People to People Mission to the Soviet Union and China in 1986, and served as an election observer for presidential elections in Haiti, Senegal, and the Dominican Republic. She was also a representative to the first African/African American Conference held on the African continent, work that reflected a career built on bridging communities as much as managing institutions.
Legacy
Azie Taylor Morton died December 7, 2003, in Austin, following complications from a stroke. Her tenure as Treasurer opened a door that, decades later, still has not been walked through again by another Black American. She is remembered less for a single dramatic moment than for a body of work spanning civil rights enforcement, party politics, international diplomacy, and the literal machinery of the U.S. financial system — proof that history is often made in offices few people think to look for it in.
Sources: BlackPast.org; Texas State Historical Association; NFCC; African American Registry
Today In Black History
In 1827, after a race riot in Cincinnati, one thousand Blacks left the city for Canada.
In 1835, a mob of white citizens in Canaan, New Hampshire, used 100 yoked oxen to pull a Black school into a nearby swamp.
In 1897, Black inventor L.P. Ray patented the dust pan.
In 1894, Black Congressman George Washington Murray disclosed that he owned 12 patents, mostly for agricultural products.
In 1956, Charles L. Gittens became the first Secret Service Agent.
In 1957, Archibald T. Carey, Jr. was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Black Chairman of the President’s Committee on Government Employment Policy.
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