And yet
A Legacy of Dead Presidents on Coins
The main reason that the U.S. has featured very few living people on their coins stems back to our Revolutionary War Forefathers. One way for a king to proclaim his sovereignty over his subjects was to have his effigy struck into the coins of his realm. For the American colonists, who were predominantly anti-royalists, the image of the king on British Coins they were forced to use in everyday transactions was a painful reminder of what they considered his tyranny and oppression.
And this is legit at the top of the treasury dept site: