Susan B. Anthony: Champion of Education, Equality, and Suffrage

Susan B. Anthony (born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 - March 13, 1906) was a pivotal figure in the women's suffrage movement and a dedicated social reformer. Her tireless advocacy for women's rights, abolition, and equal opportunity left an indelible mark on American history. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, Anthony's early life and experiences shaped her unwavering dedication to justice and reform.

Early Life and Influences

Born in Adams, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1820, Susan B. Anthony's upbringing within a Quaker family instilled in her a deep-seated belief in social equality. The Quaker religion taught that everyone is equal. Her family shared a passion for social reform. She was named for her maternal grandmother Susanah, and for her father's sister Susan. Her father, Daniel Anthony, was an abolitionist and a temperance advocate. The Anthony family's commitment to social justice extended to their involvement in the anti-slavery movement. After the Anthony family moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, they became active in the antislavery movement. Antislavery Quakers met at their farm almost every Sunday, where they were sometimes joined by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Two of Anthony's brothers, Daniel and Merritt, were later anti-slavery activists in the Kansas territory. Merritt fought with John Brown against pro-slavery forces during the Bleeding Kansas crisis.

Anthony's early experiences with inequality, including witnessing the disparity in pay between male and female teachers, fueled her passion for reform. She knew it wasn’t fair that she didn’t have a say in electing political leaders or couldn’t own property just because she was a woman. She also thought that it wasn’t right that male teachers made more money than she did.

Entering the World of Reform

Anthony embarked on her career of social reform with energy and determination. Schooling herself in reform issues, she found herself drawn to the more radical ideas of people like William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Soon she was wearing the controversial Bloomer dress, consisting of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. In 1851, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had been one of the organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention and had introduced the controversial resolution in support of women's suffrage. Anthony and Stanton were introduced by Amelia Bloomer, a feminist and mutual acquaintance. The two women had complementary skills. Anthony excelled at organizing, while Stanton had an aptitude for intellectual matters and writing. Anthony was dissatisfied with her own writing ability and wrote relatively little for publication. Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote. One of Anthony's biographers said, "Susan became one of the family and was almost another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children." A biography of Stanton says that during the early years of their relationship, "Stanton provided the ideas, rhetoric, and strategy; Anthony delivered the speeches, circulated petitions, and rented the halls. By 1854, Anthony and Stanton "had perfected a collaboration that made the New York State movement the most sophisticated in the country", according to Ann D. Gordon.

Temperance and Abolitionism

Anthony's initial forays into activism involved the temperance movement, driven by concerns about the impact of alcohol abuse on families. Temperance was very much a women's rights issue at that time because of laws that gave husbands complete control of the family and its finances. A woman with a drunken husband had little legal recourse even if his alcoholism left the family destitute and he was abusive to her and their children. In 1852, she was elected as a delegate to the state temperance convention, but the chairman stopped her when she tried to speak, saying that women delegates were there only to listen and learn. Anthony and some other women immediately walked out and announced a meeting of their own, which created a committee to organize a women's state convention. Anthony and her co-workers collected 28,000 signatures on a petition for a law to prohibit the sale of alcohol in New York State. She organized a hearing on that law before the New York legislature, the first that had been initiated in that state by a group of women.

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Simultaneously, Anthony became deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement, advocating for the abolition of slavery. She gave speeches, organized meetings, put up posters, and handed out leaflets, even though she faced angry crowds of people who disagreed with her-and thought that women shouldn’t even be speaking in public. In 1856 Anthony had become an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, arranging meetings, making speeches, putting up posters, and distributing leaflets. She encountered hostile mobs, armed threats, and things thrown at her. She was hung in effigy, and in Syracuse, New York her image was dragged through the streets.

Championing Women's Rights

Anthony's work for the women's rights movement began at a time when that movement was already gathering momentum. Stanton had helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, a local event that was the first women's rights convention. In 1850, the first in a series of National Women's Rights Conventions was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. A major hindrance to the women's movement was a lack of money. Partly through the efforts of the women's movement, a law had been passed in New York in 1848 that recognized some rights for married women, but that law was limited. In 1853 Anthony campaigned for women's property rights in New York State, speaking at meetings, collecting signatures for petitions, and lobbying the state legislature. Anthony circulated petitions for married women's property rights and woman suffrage. She addressed the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1854 and urged more petition campaigns. In 1854 she wrote to Matilda Joslyn Gage that “I know slavery is the all-absorbing question of the day, still we must push forward this great central question, which underlies all others.”

The Revolution and the National Woman Suffrage Association

Anthony and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) and in 1868 became editors of its newspaper, The Revolution. The masthead of the newspaper proudly displayed their motto, “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” Also that year, the Fourteenth Amendment passed, recognizing that those born into slavery were entitled to the same citizenship status and protections as free people. The amendment did not, however, grant universal access to the vote. A rift appeared among those, like Stanton and Anthony and Frederick Douglass, who had been allies in the fight for universal suffrage. Anthony and Stanton were hurt that Douglass supported the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted the vote to Black men only. They felt he had abandoned woman suffrage. Douglass, in turn, was hurt by the insulting arguments of Anthony and Stanton against African Americans. They all thought that it would be impossible to get the vote for both women and African Americans at the same time, and disagreed with the others’ priorities. The rift turned ugly at a public meeting of the AERA held in New York City in 1869.

Following the meeting, Stanton, Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association and focused solely on a federal woman’s suffrage amendment.

Advocacy and Activism

Anthony dedicated her life to advocating for women's rights, traveling extensively to deliver speeches, organize local women's rights organizations, and circulate petitions. In the early 1850s, Anthony starting voicing her opinion to anyone who would listen, stopping people on the streets or giving speeches around the country. She’d stand for hours to get signatures on petitions asking for women’s rights. But her fight for equal rights for women never stopped. Anthony had met fellow activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851, and after years of talking to people about women’s rights, they started a newspaper, The Revolution, in 1868 to help spread ideas of rights for women. The next year, they cofounded the National Woman Suffrage Association to focus on women’s right to vote.

The Illegality of Voting

In an effort to challenge suffrage, Anthony and her three sisters voted in the 1872 Presidential election. She was arrested at her Rochester, New York home and put on trial in the Ontario County Courthouse, Canandaigua, New York.[2] The judge instructed the jury to find her guilty without any deliberations, and imposed a $100 fine. When Anthony refused to pay a $100 fine and court costs, the judge did not sentence her to prison time, which ended her chance of an appeal. An appeal would have allowed the suffrage movement to take the question of women’s voting rights to the Supreme Court, but it was not to be.

History of Woman Suffrage

From 1881 to 1885, Anthony joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage in writing the History of Woman Suffrage. This extensive work focuses solely on white women suffragists, and does not include any suffragists of color.

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

In 1890, the National Woman Suffrage Association merged with the American Woman Suffrage Association, which argued for state-by-state enfranchisement of women (among other differences). Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the first president of the new group, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but Anthony was effectively its leader. Anthony became NAWSA president in 1892. Carrie Chapman Catt replaced Anthony as president of the organization when she retired in 1900.

International Council of Women and World’s Congress of Representative Women

Susan B. Anthony also worked for other causes, including playing a key role in the creation of the International Council of Women and helping to organize the World’s Congress of Representative Women at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. She remained active until the end of her life. In 1893, Anthony started the Rochester branch of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. She also worked to raise money that the University of Rochester required before they would agree to admit women as students. In 1895, Anthony toured Yosemite National Park by mule.

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