Susan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony was born February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts, the second of eight children. The world she was born into gave little, if any rights to women and no rights at all to African Americans. Thanks to her forward thinking father, Susan was given an education like no other female child of her age, and in doing so gave Susan B. Anthony the power to effect great change. Quite the precocious little girl, she learned to read by age 3. Raised as a Quaker by her abolitionist father and progressive mother, Susan was denied childish amusements in favor of learning. Susan's parents enforced self-discipline and encouraged a belief in one's own self worth.

Susan's father moved the family to New York when Susan was 6 years old, and upon hearing that her teacher would not instruct his daughter in long division, Daniel Anthony pulled his daughter out of the school and began to teach her himself. Poor education was simply not an option. It was when she began working as a teacher and discovered that her male teachers were earning four times as much for the same job that Susan began her long and well-fought battle for equal rights.

Susan met fellow feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and in 1852 the two succeeded in organizing the first women's state temperance society in America and it was then that she started to gain notoriety for being a strong public advocate for women's rights. She became a member of William Lloyd Garrison's Anti-Slavery Society and spoke a the Ninth National Women's Rights Convention where she posed the question: "Where, under our Declaration of Independence, does the Saxon man get his power to deprive all women and Negroes of their inalienable rights". It was clear that Susan B. Anthony was a force to be reckoned with.

In 1869 she began to devote herself strictly to all women's rights, when the Equal Rights Association supported the 15th Amendment of the Constitution stating the right for women and black men to vote, but not black women. She was arrested in November 1872 for attempting to vote in a presidential election. It was at her trial that she made her famous "On Women's Right to Vote" speech, where she stated that casting her vote was not a crime, but a right of every citizen of the United States.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ward Hunt gave the jury orders to deliver a guilty verdict and she was given a $100 fine. Upon delivery of her sentence Susan said "May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty." In fact she never did pay the fine and she was never sought for non-payment by the government.

After traveling thousands of miles in the United States and Europe, giving up to 100 speeches a year for 45 years, Susan B. Anthony died in her home in Rochester, NY on March 13, 1906. Her beliefs and hard work helped create the world that women live in today. She became the first real American woman to grace U.S. coinage, her image appearing first on the 1979 U.S. dollar. Although Susan did not live to see her life's work accomplished, the establishment of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote is greatly owed to her.