Susan B. Anthony—Facts And Information

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Susan B. Anthony was an American woman best known for her social reform activities focussing on the abolitionist movement and the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Throughout her life, she fought to procure voting rights for African-Americans and for women. She was born in 1820 into a Quaker family and was influenced by her family’s commitment to social equality.

From a young age, she was interested in social reform and at the age of 17 she became involved in the abolitionist movement, collecting anti-slavery petitions. Her interest in feminism grew in the period she was a teacher due to the pay gap between men and women. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an organizer at the famous Seneca Fall Convention and embarked on a lifelong journey fighting for women’s suffrage.

She was a strong believer of “Equal Rights for All” and she petitioned the government for giving the right to vote to all regardless of race or sex. She fought for marital rights, property rights and equal pay for women. Through her career as a social reformist, she formed organizations dedicated to the cause; spoke at many conventions; published books and a newsletter and petitioned the government and the courts to achieve her aim of social equality. She faced and overcame obstacles like not being allowed to speak publicly alongside men, severe criticism from men and politicians and even her male activists within the abolitionist movement.

Facts:

  1. She was active in the Temperance movement and in 1849 gave her first public speech at a meeting of the Daughters of Temperance. Prohibition of alcohol was supported by the women’s rights movement due to the impact of alcoholic spouses on women.
  2. In 1863, she spearheaded the largest petition drive in history with the Women’s Loyal National League, collecting about 400,000 signatures to abolish slavery. This petition which was signed by approximately 1 in every 24 adults in northern states of the US was significant in the legal abolishment of slavery.
  3. In 1868, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton she started a weekly newspaper called The Revolution with the motto “Men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less” with a primary focus on women’s rights.
  4. She initiated and was part of a number of organizations dedicated to both women’s rights and abolitionist movement. Along with Stanton she started American Equal Rights Association fighting for equal voting rights for all. She also formed the National Woman Suffrage Association after a split in the women’s suffrage movement.
  5. She voted in the presidential election of 1872 and was arrested and convicted. She refused to pay the fine in a futile hope of appealing her verdict to the Supreme Court.
  6. Through her career as a reformist, she gave an approximate of 70-100 speeches a year and earned her income solely based on that.
  7. She was the first non-fictitious woman to be depicted on a U.S. coin and her image was depicted on a dollar coin in 1979 and remains one of only three women depicted on U.S. coinage.
  8. Anthony, Stanton and Matilda Josyln Gage worked on and published a six-volume book called History of Woman Suffrage.
  9. Despite facing criticism and opposition for most of her career, she spent her 80th birthday at the White House at the request of President William McKinley.
  10. She was sure of her belief that what she had fought for would someday be achieved. In 1894, she said “We shall someday be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people think that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers.” Though she never saw the day when the women get the right to vote, her legacy and impact on the women’s suffrage movement was pivotal.

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