Susan B. Anthony: her life, her work and her legacy on her 200th birthday

February 15^th marks the 200^th birthday of Susan B. Anthony. She was an American social reformer in the fight for temperance, abolition and labor equality. She is better known a women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. She would spend over forty years, crisscrossing the country fighting for racial reforms as well as women’s reforms. While already well known, she would be brought to great fame and notoriety after she was arrested for voting in the 1872 Presidential Election. Her trial. The United States versus Susan B Anthony (1873) would be another platform for her to make her case for women’s rights. She left behind a legacy of leadership and a passion to stand up against adversity.

Susan Bronwell Anthony was born February 15, 1820 to Daniel and Lucy (nee Read) Anthony in Adams, Massachusetts as the second of seven children. As a Quaker family, they were passionate for social reform. Although Mr. Anthony would often be at odds with the traditionalist Quaker congregation as he married a non-Quaker. He encouraged Susan as well as all his children to be self-supporting, teaching them business principles and giving them responsibility at a young age. At 17, Susan was sent to a Quaker boarding school but left after one term as the family hit hard times with the Panic of 1837. She would begin teaching at a Quaker school in order to assist her family. After the family moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, her father helped form the Congregational Friends with other Quaker social reformers in 1848. There she would meet Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) who would become her lifelong friend. In 1851, she would meet Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and the two would be the dynamic duo for the women’s rights movement. Susan had the organization skills and Elizabeth excelled at the writing. Together, they would start a weekly newspaper, The Revolution, in 1868, with it’s motto “Men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less.” She would work until her death on March 13, 1906 at the age of 86. Although we would not live to see the women’s suffrage on the national level (the 19^th Amendment would be ratified in 1920), she expressed pride at the progress made.

Ms. Anthony was arrested on November 18, 1872 and charged with illegal voting. Her arrest would generate a national controversy. Her trial would begin on June 17, 1873 during which she made the speech entitled, “Is it a Crime for a US Citizen to Vote?” In it, she makes the argument that as citizens of the United States, women have the right to vote and uses the US Constitution to illustrate her point. “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people- women as well as men.” She also uses the same logic for women’s suffrage as given for the freed slaves in the 13^th Amendment. “Every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.” She would be ordered to pay a $100 fine, which she said, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” She never did. It remains unpaid in the courthouse ledger (Rosenthal, 2017).

She left behind an amazing legacy. Anthony, Stanton and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in May 1869. That organization still thrives today as it transformed to be the League of Women Voters (League of Women Voters). She demonstrated leadership in many ways. Through devotion to her cause, seizing the opportunity when it presented itself and refused to be intimidated by those in power when fighting for her rights (DeMarco, 2016). She developed a reputation for fearlessness in the face of adversity and controversy. She would wear the Bloomer dress (a controversial style in which pantaloons were worn under a knee length dress) for a time in 1851. She would stop when the focus became her dress and not her ideas. To celebrate her contribution to the suffrage movement, the women of Rochester, New York make a pilgrimage to her grave every election day and place their “I Voted” stickers on her gravestone (Rosenthal, 2017). Her life and work is a great testimony to righting wrong and opening the doors of opportunity through education and defending one’s rights.

In conclusion, Susan B. Anthony was a woman of great passion for her causes. While she is remembered for her fight for women’s suffrage, she also fought for full citizenship for freed slaves, labor equality and overall women’s rights as full citizens of the United States. She is the first woman to be minted on US currency when the Susan B Anthony dollar was first minted in 1979. While this year marks her 200^th birthday, it is also extra special as this year also marks the 100^th anniversary of the 19^th Amendment. Due to her and others commitment to the fight for suffrage, myself and generations of women can cast their votes and have their voices heard.

References

DeMarco, Peter (November 18, 2016). Leader Time: 6 key lessons from the legacy of Susan B. Anthony. https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2016/11/6-key-lessons-from-the-legacy-of-susan-b-anthony.html. Retrieved February 10, 2020.

League of Women Voters. https://www.lwv.org/about-us/history. Retrieved February 11, 2020.

The National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House. www.susanb.org. Retrieved February 10, 2020.

Rosenthal, Peggy (August 22, 2017). Susan B. Anthony: Failure is Impossible. https://imagejournal.org/2017/08/22/susan-b-anthony-failure-impossible/. Retrieved February 10, 2020.

The Invention of Wings: a book about an often forgotten historical figure

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd is a story about a young girl who grows up on a southern plantation to become one of the greatest human rights advocates who would influence countless women after her. When I was given the book, I was told that it was about a real person which made the story more interesting. As I started reading, I realized I recognized the name, Sarah Grimke. As I googled her name, I realized that I studied her in my college history courses. Along with her sister, Angelina and her brother-in-law, Theodore, she would write the second most influential anti-slavery literature. American Slavery As It Is would be second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ms. Stowe was heavily influenced by their book.

The Invention of Wings opens in November 1803 with Hetty “Handful” Grimke, a slave and daughter of the Grimke’s seamstress, Charlotte. Handful is given to Sarah as her lady’s maid by her parents on Sarah’s eleventh birthday. Sarah wants no part in owning a slave but she is stuck. She vows to free Handful somehow. The two women will form a friendship that will test the understanding what a privileged white woman could have on the plight of the African slaves. Through both women’s eyes, the reader will be witness to the harshness that slaves were treated with. Harsh punishments for behavior as simple as looking in the wrong direction. Sarah will find a voice in a society where women weren't allowed to have opinions much less voice them.

The story is actually told from the perspectives of both Sarah and Handful as each chapter is from viewpoint of one of the women. Handful as she struggles with the bonds of slavery and Sarah as she struggles with the bonds of societal gender roles. The reader begins to see both sides of a turning points in our nation’s history. The battle for the abolition movements is heating up as the story ends in June 1838, 23 years before the start of the Civil War, the reader knows it’s not the end for these two women. While I was familiar with Sarah Grimke, I enjoyed reading her background and how she developed her world views. She is known as an abolitionist and a woman’s rights advocate but to her, they are one in the same: human rights. Racial equality and gender equality it was all the same to her. 

This book begins slowly but as you read, you get hooked. You want to know what happens to Handful, her mom, Charlotte, and Sarah. I enjoyed Ms. Kidd’s inclusion of the famous names of the time. Names like Denmark Vesey, a freed slave who would be executed for planning a slave revolt, Henry Clay who helped devise the Missouri Compromise, which would add fuel to the abolition fire, and William Lloyd Garrison, editor of an abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. There is so much more that I could write about but I would rather you read the book for yourself and discover the history of a woman who was instrumental to the cause of abolition even though many who study history will never know her name.