Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony was the pioneer and key spokesperson for the 19th century

women's suffrage movement. She was and activist, reformer, teacher, and lecturer. Anthony

was born in South Adams, Massachusetts, 15 Feb., 1820. The second of eight children, Susan

learned to read and write at age three. In 1826, when she was six years old, the family moved to

Battenville, New York. Susan attended a local district school, where a teacher refused to teach

her long division due to her gender. When her father learned this, he took Susan and her sisters

out of the district school and placed them in a group homeschool that he founded. Mary Perkins,

a teacher in the home school, offered a new and daring image of womanhood to Susan and her

sisters, undoubtedly fostering Susan's strong beliefs towards female equality and women's rights.

In 1848 Susan B. Anthony was working as a teacher in Canajoharie, New York and

became involved with the teacher’s union when she discovered that male teachers had a monthly

salary of $10.00, while the female teachers earned $2.50 a month. This inspired her to fight for

women teachers to obtain wages equivalent to those of male teachers. Eventually she would be

fired from her position. During the war she devoted herself to the women's loyal league, which

petitioned congress in favor of the 13th amendment. In 1860 she started a petition in favor of

leaving out the word " male" in the 14th amend-merit, and worked with the national woman

suffrage association to induce congress to secure to her sex the right of voting. In 1867 she went

to Kansas with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone, and there obtained 9,000 votes in favor

of woman suffrage.

Anthony’s experience with the teacher’s union, temperance and antislavery reforms, and

Quaker upbringing, laid fertile ground for a career in women’s rights reform to growSusan B.

Anthony dedicated her life to "the cause," the woman suffrage movement. The accomplishments

of Susan B. Anthony paved the way for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 (14

years after her death) which gave women the right to vote. Her accomplishments include the

following:

• Founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869 with life-long friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Together they worked for women's suffrage for over 50 years.

• Published "The Revolution" from 1868-1870, a weekly paper about the woman suffrage movement whose motto read, "Men their rights and nothing more, women their rights and nothing less.

• First person arrested, put on trial and fined for voting on November 5, 1872. Unable to speak in her defense she refuse to pay "a dollar of your unjust penalty."

• Wrote the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in 1878 which later became the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

• Helped found the National American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1890 which focused on a national amendment to secure women the vote. She served as president until 1900.

• Compiled and published "The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols. 1881-1902) with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.

• Founded the International Council of Women (1888) and the International Woman Suffrage Council (1904) which brought international attention to suffrage.

• Gave 75-100 speeches a year for 45 years, traveling throughout the the United States by stage coach, wagon, carriage and train.

• Led the only non-violent revolution in our country's history -- the 72 year struggle to win women the right to vote.