February 15 – Happy Birthday, Susan B. Anthony

Posted on February 15, 2021

This is an update of my post from February 15, 2010:

Born on this day in 1820 in Massachusetts, Susan B. Anthony was raised in a Quaker family that believed in reforms such as abolishing slavery. She worked for reform in the anti-slavery and temperance movements but then moved in an unexpected direction—working for women’s rights.

Susan B. Anthony is especially known for her efforts toward gaining the right to vote for women in the U.S. She helped organize women’s suffrage groups, spoke and wrote about her cause, and in 1872 she (along with 14 other women) voted in a presidential election—and two weeks later, Anthony was arrested for doing so!

Anthony died in 1906, and U.S. women finally won the right to vote in 1920. Although she didn’t live to see her goal reached, Anthony’s work toward the goal was key to obtaining women’s suffrage. Do you think that she felt her life was in vain? Was it?

Did you know…?

• Anthony learned how to read and write at age 3!
  

• Susan B. Anthony traveled through the U.S. and Europe, giving 75 to 100 speeches on women’s rights every year for 45 years!!

• At her trial (for voting in the 1872 election), Anthony was fined $100 plus the costs of the prosecution. Anthony refused on principle to pay. The judge didn’t want the case to go to a higher court, so he didn’t imprison her….And so Anthony never paid a penny of her fine!

• The trial was really unfair, by the way. If you want to read an interesting (but long) account of the trial, look here.

• I said that U.S. women didn’t win the right to vote until 14 years after Anthony died, but actually women in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Colorado COULD vote within her lifetime. Also, worldwide, women’s suffrage was passed in New Zealand and Australia before she died and in Finland the year she died.

• Anthony was the first actual woman (not fictional woman, like “Lady Liberty”) to be honored on a U.S. coin (the Susan B. Anthony dollar). It was only minted four years: 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1999. (I don’t know why there was such a long gap.)

Here is a short video about Anthony’s life. 

PBS has a gorgeous website about women’s rights.

John Frum Day in Tanna, Vanuatu