Born
200 years ago, on February 15, 1820, for nearly sixty years before her death at
the age of 86, Susan B. Anthony was an active agitator for change. In a letter
she wrote in 1883, Anthony (SBA) said,
SBA:
Agitator for Temperance
Because
of her concern for abused women and children, Anthony’s first public activity
as an agitator was in the temperance movement, which was the effort to outlaw
alcohol. (Many of you saw my related 2/9
blog article about Prohibition.)
In
1848 when she was 28 years old, Susan’s first public speech was given for
temperance.
In
her book Susan B. Anthony (2019), Teri Kanefield wrote about how Anthony
“spoke passionately about ‘the day when our brothers and sons shall no longer
be allured from the right by corrupting influence’ of alcohol so that ‘our
sisters and daughters shall no longer be exposed to the half-inebriated
seducer’” (p. 40).
In
1851 Anthony met Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and colleague, and the following year they
founded the Women's New York State Temperance Society.
(In 1999, Ken Burns
produced “Not For Ourselves Alone,” a splendid, 210-minute documentary about Anthony and Stanton; June
and I enjoyed watching it last year on PBS.)
The next year, 1853,
after being denied the opportunity to speak at a temperance convention because
she was a woman, Anthony realized that no one would take women in politics
seriously unless they had the right to vote. Thus, the seeds of her most
important work as an agitator for women’s rights were planted.
SBA: Agitator for Abolition
For
the next twelve years, however, Anthony worked for the abolition of slavery. In
1849, while still in her 20s, Susan met Frederick Douglass, who was two years
older than she, and they were friends and colleagues—and antagonists—in the
fight for equality until his death in 1895.
As
a Quaker, Anthony believed that all people were of equal worth and should be
treated equally. That belief undergirded her work for the rights of women. But
in the 1850s and early 1860s, she was focused primarily on eradicating slavery
in the U.S.
In
1856 Anthony became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, which William
Lloyd Garrison had co-founded in 1833. Drawing a small salary from the Society,
Susan began touring the country and making speeches about the evils of slavery.
After
Lincoln’s election as President in 1860, Anthony faced terrible opposition to
her work against slavery—even in New York. But she didn’t give up or quit being
an agitator.
In
1863 Anthony and Stanton formed the Women’s National Loyal League. In the largest petition drive in the
nation's history up to that time, the League collected nearly 400,000
signatures on petitions to abolish slavery and presented them to Congress.
That indefatigable work by Anthony and Stanton significantly
assisted the passage in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended
slavery in the U.S.
SBA:
Agitator for Suffrage
The next fight was for the right for women, both black and white, to vote. In the
early 1860s, white abolitionist men, such as William Lloyd Garrison, and black
men, such as Frederick Douglass, were all for black men obtaining the right to
vote. But they did not support the vote for women. Anthony and Stanton were
outraged.
Anthony
managed to register and even to vote in the election of 1872. She was
subsequently arrested and convicted—but refused to pay her fine of $100 plus
costs.
Even
though she was a Quaker woman, in 1893 she exclaimed. “Organize, agitate, educate,
must be our war cry!”
Anthony
spent the last forty years of her long life working for women’s right to vote.
Sadly, she never succeeded during her lifetime. But just a month before her death in
1906, she gave her last speech concluding with the rousing phrase, "Failure is
impossible!”
Nicknamed the "Anthony Amendment" in
honor of Susan, who had worked so long and so persistently, the
Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote was finally ratified
on August 18, 1920.
Now, 100 years later, there will be far more women
than men who will vote (and vote in the right way!) in the presidential
election of 2020.
*****
In 2019, the city of
Liberty (Mo.) where I live erected a life-size statue of Susan B. Anthony on
the southeast corner of the historic square. Toward the end of their successful
football season, she was sporting Chiefs’ apparel, as you see in the picture
.
