Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) Benedict Gombocz

Synopsis

Born on February 15, 1820, Susan B. Anthony grew up in a Quaker family and worked as a teacher before she became a prominent figure in the

abolitionist and women’s voting rights movements.

Anthony, a devoted author and speaker, teamed up with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and went on to lead the National American Woman Suffrage

Association.

She died on March 13, 1906.

Early Life

Early Life Born Susan Brownell Anthony in Adams, Massachusetts on February 15, 1820,

Susan B. Anthony was born into a Quaker family.

Anthony developed an important ethical contrive early in her life; she committed much of her life to social causes.

She was the second oldest of eight children born to a local cotton mill owner and his wife.

In 1826, the family relocated to Battenville, New York, around which time she was sent to study at a Quaker school not far from Philadelphia.

After the failure of her father’s business in the late 1830s, Anthony returned home to help her family in making ends meet; she ended up finding work as a teacher.

In the mid-1840s, the Anthony family moved to a farm in the Rochester, New York area; here, the family joined the struggle to end slavery, also known as the abolitionist movement.

The family farm served as a meeting location for renowned abolitionists like Frederick Douglass; prior to this time, Anthony headed the girls’ department at Canajoharie Academy (now West Hill School), a position she held for only two years.

Susan B. Anthony’s birthplace

West Hill School, site of the former

Canajoharie Academy, April 2010

Leading Activist

Leading Activist After she left the Canajoharie Academy in 1849, Anthony soon committed

more of her time to social issues.

In 1851, Anthony attended an anti-slavery meeting, where she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton; in addition, Anthony participated in the temperance movement, whose aim was to restrict or entirely cease the manufacturing and selling of liquor.

She was motivated to fight for women’s rights while she was involved in an anti-alcohol campaign.

Unfortunately, Anthony was forbidden from speaking at a temperance convention just because she was a woman; only later did she realize that very few would take a role for women in politics seriously unless they were allowed to vote.

In 1852, Anthony and Stanton founded the Women’s New York State Temperance Society; together, the two of them fought for women’s rights, and they also founded the New York State Women’s Rights Committee.

Anthony also began petitions for women to be able to own property and to vote; she traveled wide around the country, and campaigned in support of women.

She started working as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, spending years advancing the society’s cause up to the Civil War.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, 1871

Women’s Right to Vote

Women’s Right to Vote Anthony continued to devote her attention to women’s rights after

the Civil War.

She and Stanton helped found the American Equal Rights

Association in 1866, demanding the same rights to be given to all

regardless of race or sex.

They also created and produced The Revolution, a weekly

newspaper that campaigned for women’s rights between 1868-

1872; the newspaper’s slogan was “Men, their rights, and nothing

more; women, their rights, and nothing less”.

The year after they founded The Revolution, Anthony and Stanton

established the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Anthony was determined in her efforts, and delivered speeches

throughout the United States to persuade others to support the right

of women to vote; she additionally risked voting illegally in the

presidential election in 1872.

She was arrested and did not successfully fight the accusations; she

was fined $100, which she never paid.

June 18, 1868 issue of The Revolution

Women’s Right to Vote (cont.)

Women’s Right to Vote (cont.) In the early 1880s, Anthony issued the first volume of History of Woman

Suffrage, a project that she co-edited with Stanton, Ida Husted Harper, and Matilda Joslin Gage; a number of other volumes followed.

Anthony also assisted Harper in writing her own story, which led to the publication of the 1898 book The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: A Story of the Evolution of the Status of Women.

History of Woman Suffrage, volumes I-IV

The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: A Story of

the Evolution of the Status of Women, volumes I-III

Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy Even during her final years, Susan B. Anthony did not give up on the

struggle for women’s suffrage.

Anthony met with President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.

in 1905, to campaign for an amendment to grant women the right to

vote.

She died the following year, on March 13, 1906 at her home in

Rochester, New York; she was 86.

According to her tribute in The New York Times, not long before she

died, Anthony told her friend Anna Shaw, “To think I have had more

than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die

without it seems so cruel.“

It was not until 1920, fourteen years after her death, that the

nineteenth amendment, granting all adult women the right to vote,

was passed.

The U.S. Treasury Department recognized Susan B. Anthony’s

commitment and hard work by putting her picture on dollar coins

from 1979-1981 and again in 1999; she was the first woman to win

such an honor.

Nineteenth Amendment

Vote on the nineteenth amendment, May 21, 1919

Ratification of the nineteenth amendment

Statue of Susan B. Anthony having tea

with Frederick Douglass

References

References http://www.biography.com/people/susan-b-anthony-194905

Other sites:

Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S.:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenstimeline1.html

Women’s History in America:

http://www.wic.org/misc/history.htm

Susan B. Anthony 1999 dollar coin,

front and back