Susan Brownell Anthony, (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American civil rights leader who, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led the effort to grant women the right to vote in the United States.
She was born in Adams, Massachusetts, the daughter of Quakers. Soon after her birth, the Anthony family moved to the state of New York, and after 1845 she lived in Rochester, New York. While in Rochester, she attended the Unitarian Church.
She received her early education in a school her father ran for his and neighbors' children, and from the age of 17 to 32 she herself taught in various schools. In the decade preceding the outbreak of the American Civil War, she took a prominent part in the anti-slavery and temperance movements in New York, organizing in 1852 the first woman's state temperance society in America, and becoming in 1856 the agent for New York state of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
After 1854 she devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for women's rights, and became recognized as one of the ablest and most zealous advocates of the complete legal equality of the two sexes, and as a public speaker and writer. From 1868 to 1870 she was the proprietor of a weekly paper, The Revolution, published in New York City, edited by Stanton, and having as its motto:
- "The true republic — men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less."
Also included in The Revolution were a number of quotes displaying the pro-life views of Susan B. Anthony. Many early feminists, aware of how the procedure endangered women's health and lives, opposed abortion on practical and moral grounds and hoped that greater equality for women would end the need for abortion.
She was vice-president-at-large of the National Woman's Suffrage Association from the date of its organization in 1869 until 1892, when she became president.
For casting a vote in the presidential election held on November 5, 1872, as she asserted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution entitled her to do, she was served a warrant on November 18 and was eventually fined $100 June 18 1873, but she never paid the fine.
In collaboration with Stanton, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper , she published The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols., New York, 1884–1887). Susan B. Anthony was also a friend of Josephine Brawley Hughes, an advocate of women's rights and of alcohol abolition from Arizona. She died at Rochester, New York, on March 13, 1906.
Susan B. Anthony was honored as the first real (non-allegorical) woman on circulating U.S. coinage in 1979 with her appearance on the Anthony dollar.
She was very self-conscious, both of her looks (one eye always pointed slightly outwards) and of her speaking abilities. She long resisted public speaking for fear her speech would not be good enough.
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Last updated: 10-16-2005 01:59:38
