After listening to her father and others who wanted to free the slaves, Susan B. Anthony began speaking and writing in its favor. At the same time, she joined the Women’s State Temperance Society however when the male members refused to combine the efforts of the abolitionists and women’s right to vote, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton resigned to focus on the suffragette movement.
On February 15, 1820, Susan B. Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts to a Quaker family that believed in the education of women. By the time she was a teenager, she began instructing children and by 1840 was teaching at a boarding school near New York City. During this time, she found others who agreed with her father’s ideals that slavery should be abolished and Blacks should be given equal treatment. In 1853, this was to include the rights of women.
Career as a Teacher
Susan B. Anthony began her teaching career by instructing children in their own homes. By the age of 26, she acquired her first paid position as the head of the girls’ department at Canajoharie Academy where she remained for two years.
Speaking at the state teachers’ convention in 1853, she advocated for women be admitted to the professions, be given better salaries and a voice at the convention including committee positions. At the 1859 convention, she argued for coeducation, claiming there was no difference between the minds of men and women. In the 1890’s, Anthony served on the board of Trustee of Rochester’s State Industrial School, campaigning for the equal treatment of girls and boys.
Abolitionist Activist
In 1845, the Quaker Anthony family was already active in the Abolitionists movement and held anti-slavery meetings at their home. Susan B. Anthony became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856, arranging meetings, making speeches, putting up posters and distributing leaflets. She was often was often abused by angry, threatening mobs.
The Women’s National Loyal League was organized by Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to support and petition for the Thirteen Amendment outlawing slavery. They campaigned for Black and women’s full citizenship and the right to vote in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment which were passed but women were excluded.
Women’s Rights Advocate
During 1868, Anthony and Stanton’s newspaper, The Revolution, began advocating an eight-hour day and equal pay for equal work. They began encouraging working women in the printing and sewing trades in New York, who were excluded from men’s trade unions, to form Workingwomen’s Associations. Anthony became president of the Workingwomen’s Central Association in 1870 and began developing reports on working conditions and educational opportunities for women. The men’s Typographical Union accused her of being an enemy of unions when she encouraged employers to hire women when the men went on strike. In 1890’s. As president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she later worked to obtain the support of the unions for equal pay for equal work.
The women’s rights movements split into two factions in 1869 as the American Equal Rights Association advocated for a constitutional amendment and the Woman’s Suffrage Association worked for a state-by-state adoption. In 1887, the two organizations merged into the National Women’s Suffrage Association. Wyoming became the first territory to give women the right to vote in 1869.
Susan B. Anthony died on March 13, 1906, fourteen and a half years after the Nineteenth Amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, guaranteeing women the vote, was ratified in August 1920. In 1970 she was honored with her picture on the one-dollar coin.
Sources: Susan B. Anthony House Publications
The National Women's History Project
Bibliography:
Sherr, Lynn. Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words. New York, Three Rivers
Press, 1996
Lutz, Alma. Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian. Charleston, N.C.,BiblioBazaar, 2007
