The Life of Susan B. Anthony, a Women’s Right Activist

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

-Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Where she was brought up in a Quaker family that had long activist traditions. With this, she developed early in her life a sense of justice and moral enthusiasm.

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She taught for fifteen years at a Quaker seminary, and from there became a

headmistress at a women's division of a school. At 29 years old, she then became active in

restraint and temperance. Because she was a woman, she was not allowed to speak at

Temperance Rallies. This experience, and her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was to become her lifelong partner in political organizing, especially for women's rights and woman suffrage, led her to join the women's rights movement in 1852. Soon after this, she decided she needed to dedicated her life to woman suffrage.

Ignoring opposition and abuse, Anthony traveled, lectured and canvassed across the nation for the vote for women's rights. She would also go on to campaign for the abolition of slavery, women's rights to their own property and earnings, and women's labor organizations. In 1900, Anthony persuaded the University of Rochester to admit women. Which I see as a big step for women's rights in history. In 1872, in an attempt to claim that the constitution already permitted women to vote, Susan B. Anthony cast a test vote in Rochester, New York, in the presidential election. She was found guilty for it, though she refused to pay the resulting fine but no attempt was made to force her to do so.

In her writings, Anthony occasionally mentioned abortion. Anthony opposed abortion which at the time was an unsafe medical procedure for women, endangering their health and life. She blamed men, laws and the "double standard" for driving women to abortion because they had no other options. She stated. "When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged." She believed, as did many of the feminists of her era, that only the achievement of women's equality and freedom would end the need for abortion. Anthony used her anti-abortion writings as yet another argument for women's rights.

Some of Anthony's writings were also quite racist by today's standards, particularly those from the period when she was angry that the Fifteenth Amendment wrote the word "male" into the constitution for the first time in permitting suffrage for freedmen. She sometimes argued that educated white women would be better voters than "ignorant" black men or immigrant men

Anthony never did marry. But she was aggressive and compassionate by nature; she had a sharp mind and a great ability to inspire. She remained actively interested in all of her campaigning subjects until her death on March 13, 1906.

Just an unknown, or interesting fact: In 1979, Anthony's image was chosen for the new dollar coin, making her the first woman to be depicted on US currency. The size of the dollar was, however, close to that of the quarter, and the Anthony dollar never became very popular.

ROCHESTER, March 13,-- Miss Susan B. Anthony died at 12:40 o'clock this morning. The end

came peacefully. Miss Anthony had been unconscious practically all of the time for more than twenty- four hours, and her death had been almost momentarily expected since last night. Only her wonderful constitution kept her alive.

Dr. M. S. Ricker, her attending physician, said Miss Anthony died of heart disease and pneumonia of both lungs. She had had serious valvuler heart trouble for the last six or seven years. Her lungs were practically clear and the pneumonia had yielded to treatment, but the weakness of her heart prevented her recovery.

Miss Anthony was taken ill while on her way home from the National Suffrage Convention in Baltimore. She stopped in New York, where a banquet was to be given Feb. 20 in honor of her eighty- sixth birthday, but she had an attack of neuralgia on Feb. 18 and hastened home. Pneumonia developed after her arrival here, and on March 5 both her lungs became affected. She rallied, but had a relapse three days ago, and the end after that never was in doubt.

Miss Anthony herself had believed that she would recover. Early in her illness she told her friends that she expected to live to be as old as her father, who was over 90 when he died. But on Wednesday she said to her sister:

"Write to Anna Shaw immediately, and tell her I desire that every cent I leave when I pass out of this life shall be given to the fund which Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett are raising for the cause. I have given my life and all I am to it, and now I want my last act to be to give it all I have, to the last cent. Tell Anna Shaw to see that this is done."

Miss Shaw said:

"On Sunday, about two hours before she became unconscious, I talked with Miss Anthony, and she said: "To think I have had more than sixty years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel."

Susan Brownell Anthony was a pioneer leader of the cause of woman suffrage, and her energy was tireless in working for what she considered to be the best interests of womankind. At home and abroad she had innumerable friends, not only among those who sympathized with her views, but among those who held opinions radically opposed to her. In recent years her age made it impossible for her to continue active participation in all the movements for the enfranchisement of women with which she had been connected, but she was at the time of her death the Honorary President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, the society which she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized in 1869.

Miss Anthony possessed a figure of medium size, a firm but rather pleasing face, clear hazel eyes, and dark hair which she always wore combed smoothly over the ears and bound in a coil at the back. She paid much attention to dress and advised those associated in the movement for women suffrage to be punctilious in all matters pertaining to the toilet. For a little over a year in the early fifties she wore a bloomer costume, consisting of a short skirt and a pair of Turkish trousers gathered at the ankles. So great an outcry arose against the innovation both from the pulpit and the press that she was subjected to many indignities, and forced to abandon it.

Miss Anthony was born at South Adams, Mass., on Feb. 15, 1820. Daniel Anthony, her father, a liberal Quaker, was a cotton manufacturer. Susan Anthony was first instructed by teachers at home.

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