Susan B. Anthony
(Feb. 15, 1820 - March 13, 1906)
Susan B. Anthony was brought up in a Quaker family with long activist traditions. After teaching for 15 years, she became active in the temperance movement. In 1849, Anthony gave her first public speech for the Daughters of Temperance and then helped found the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York, one of the first temperance organizations of its time.
This experience, and her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led her to join the women's rights movement in 1852. In 1868, the two collaborated in publishing a weekly journal, The Revolution, which promoted women's and African Americans' right to suffrage and discussed issues of equal pay for equal work, more liberal divorce laws and the church's position on women's issues.
In 1872, Anthony demanded that women be given the same civil and political rights that had been extended to black males under the 14th and 15th amendments. Thus, she led a group of women to the polls in Rochester, N.Y., to test the right of women to vote. She was arrested two weeks later, found guilty of violating the voting laws and was sentenced to pay a $100 fine. She refused to pay the resulting fine, and no attempt was made to force her to do so.
After her trial, Anthony continued to campaign for women's rights. Between 1881 and 1886, she and Stanton published three volumes of the "History of Woman Suffrage," a collection of writings about the movement's struggle. In 1890 they strengthened the suffrage cause by forming the larger National American Woman Suffrage Association. At the time of her death in 1906, however, only four states - Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Utah - had granted suffrage to women. But her crusade carried on, and in 1920 Congress adopted the 19th Amendment, finally giving women throughout America the right to vote.
Related Library Resources :
- Account of the proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony
- Susan B. Anthony and “American Treasures of the Library of Congress”
- Selected images from the Susan B. Anthony Collection
- She Stood to Conquer: Susan B. Anthony Collection Documents and Early Feminist's Life (Library of Congress Information Bulletin, April 17, 1996 - Vol. 54, No. 8)
- Full-length portrait of Susan B. Anthony