Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906

Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906

Susan Brownell Anthony was an advocate for women's rights and suffrage. She also championed the causes of abolition, labor and education reform, and temperance. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father was a Quaker abolitionist and a cotton manufacturer. He believed girls should be educated, and sent her to a Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Anthony taught school for fifteen years. In her first paid position, she headed the girls' department at the Canajoharie Academy. It was there that she joined the Daughters of Temperance, and delivered her first public address before that group in 1848. Anthony, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, would later be asked to resign from the Women's State Temperance Society, a group she'd founded, for focusing too much on women's issues.

Anthony began campaigning on behalf of women's rights in 1853. She lobbied for women's property rights in New York State, and the New York State Married Women's Property Bill resulted in 1860. She and Stanton also campaigned for more enlightened divorce laws in New York. At teachers' conventions in the 1850s, Anthony spoke out on behalf of women. She argued that female teachers should be better compensated for their work, declared that women should be allowed to pursue more professions, and championed coeducation, pointing out that women were as intelligent as men. She also requested more representation for women at the conventions, and on committees. In the 1890s, she fought for coeducation as a member of the board of trustees for Rochester, New York's State Industrial School . She also raised $50,000 to enable women to attend the University of Rochester. They were first admitted, thanks to her efforts, in 1900.

An abolitionist, Anthony urged schools and institutions of higher learning to admit ex-slaves, and pointed out that children of ex-slaves should be able to attend public schools. She became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856, and actively supported the crusade to give Blacks and women full citizenship and voting rights.

Anthony's work in the temperance movement gave her the political experience she needed as the fight for women's suffrage began to crystallize. After the Civil War, she and other supporters of women's suffrage were disappointed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which made former slaves citizens and gave Black men the right to vote, but excluded women. In 1869, the suffrage movement was divided over the Fifteenth Amendment. Anthony and Stanton, who opposed it, organized the National Woman Suffrage Association, while Lucy Stone, whose politics were more moderate, founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. Stone's association focused on suffrage locally and at the state level, while Stanton and Anthony fought for a federal suffrage amendment. The two groups would work separately until 1887, when they merged as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. During her presidency at the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the 1890s, Anthony diversified her activism by reaching out to members of the organized labor movement.

In 1872, Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York for attempting to cast a vote. She was found guilty without discussion in 1873. In 1877, members of Congress scoffed at the 10,000-signature petition she had collected from 26 states. She spoke before each congress from 1869 to 1906 on behalf of a suffrage amendment.

Anthony died in 1906 at the age of 86. In 1920, women were finally enfranchised by the Nineteenth Amendment, which was also referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Source: Lynda G. Adamson's Notable Women in American History; Susan B. Anthony House ; "Women's Suffrage" by Miriam Sagan