| Anthony, Susan B. |
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Feminist leader (1820-1906) |  |
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The daughter of a successful farmer and mill-owner, Susan Anthony grew up in a devout Quaker family in northern New York State. She worked as a schoolteacher in her teens and twenties, before abandoning her career in 1849 and turning her energies toward social reform. Her Quaker upbringing exposed her to many reform causes of the day, notably temperance, women's rights and the abolition of slavery. In the 1850s, Anthony became a prominent figure in the women's rights movement, working closely with longtime activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She also served in the American Anti-Slavery Society, and challenged barriers to female leadership in temperance societies and educational associations. |
 | | Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) | | © 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin |
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Following the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony focused their efforts on voting rights, in hopes that suffrage for women and blacks could be linked in a groundbreaking constitutional amendment. In 1869, they founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. When the proposed 14th and 15th Amendments ensured equal rights for blacks but not for women, they opposed their passage and continued calling for a more comprehensive amendment. Throughout the rest of the century, Anthony directed the NWSA's organizing efforts and travelled widely to support state suffrage campaigns. In 1872, she was arrested and fined $100 for illegally voting in that year's presidential election. As the suffrage movement grew, the aging Anthony exerted a profound influence on a new generation of activists, whose continuing efforts would lead to the ratification of the 19th Amendment fourteen years after Anthony's death.
SOURCES: Notable American Women; Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography. |
