Written by: Shuban Pradhan - 24005, Grade X
Posted on: 19 January, 2022
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), the most famous suffragist of her period, has become a symbol of the women's suffrage movement. She gave speeches across the country, helped to build local women's rights organizations and circulate petitions.
Anthony was born in the Massachusetts town of Adams. After relocating to Rochester, New York in 1845, the Anthony family got involved in the antislavery effort. Antislavery Quakers met practically every Sunday at their farm, with Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison occasionally joining them. Later in the Kansas territory, two of Anthony's brothers, Daniel and Merritt, were anti-slavery campaigners.
Susan B. Anthony was a teacher in Canajoharie, New York, in 1848 when she became involved with the teacher's union after learning that male instructors were paid $10.00 per month while female teachers were paid $2.50. Her parents and sister Marry were among those who attended the Rochester Woman's Rights Convention on August 2, 1848.
Anthony's involvement with the teacher's union, temperance and antislavery movements, and Quaker background prepared him for a career in women's rights reform. The career would kick off with a meeting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Amelia Bloomer met Elizabeth Cady Stanton on a street corner in Seneca Falls in 1851, and Stanton later recalled the encounter: "There she stood with her good earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray silk, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety." I really liked her, and I'm not sure why I didn't invite her over for supper right away."
Although meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton sparked her interest in women's rights, Lucy Stone's address at the 1852 Syracuse Convention is credited with persuading Anthony to join the women's rights movement.
Anthony spoke at meetings, collected signatures for petitions, and lobbied the state government in support of women's property rights in New York State in 1853. Anthony disseminated petitions advocating for the property rights of married women and women's suffrage. In 1854, she spoke at the National Woman's Rights Convention, urging greater petition drives. "I know slavery is the all-absorbing concern of the day," she wrote to Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1854, "but we must push forward this big basic question, which underpins all others."
By 1856, Anthony had joined the American Anti-Slavery Society as an agent, organizing meetings, giving speeches, hanging posters, and distributing flyers. She was confronted by violent mobs, armed threats, and objects hurled at her. Her image was dragged through the streets of Syracuse, where she was burned in effigy.
Anthony sat on the business committee of the 1856 National Women's Rights Convention, where he spoke about the importance of disseminating printed material on women's rights. She identified The Lily and The Woman's Advocate and stated that they were selling documents on the site.
By 1869, Stanton, Anthony, and others had created the National Woman Suffrage Association and were working on a federal suffrage amendment. Anthony and her three sisters voted in the 1872 Presidential election in an attempt to test suffrage. She was arrested and tried at Canandaigua, New York's Ontario Courthouse. The court gave the jury instructions to find her guilty without discussion and issued a fine of $100. Because Anthony declined to pay a $100 fine and court fees, the judge did not sentence her to prison, thereby ending her appeal. The suffrage campaign would have been able to take the issue of women's voting rights to the Supreme Court if they had won an appeal, but that was not to be.
Anthony collaborated on the History of Woman Suffrage with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage from 1881 to 1885. The Nineteenth Amendment was renamed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment as a final tribute to Susan B. Anthony. In 1920, it was ratified.
