2. 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.
3. 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
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: A Story of
the Evolution of the Status of Women, volumes I-III
9. 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
10. Vote on the nineteenth amendment, May 21, 1919
