Do you have your calendar ready for the new year? If it was 1918, you could have this Susan B. Anthony calendar filled with rousing quotes from the suffragist.
Issued less than two years before the ratification of the 19th amendment, the page for January 1918 tells American women that “the hour for political action has come.”
This calendar (along with several other suffragist and women’s rights calendars) is part of the Adelaide Johnson papers in the Lisa Unger Baskin collection.
She’s the face on that weird dollar coin you get from the airport cart machine and one of America’s original push girls. Susan B. Anthony was involved in activism and abolitionist movements since before she could walk, thanks to growing up in a Quaker household. And by the time she hooked up with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she was an unstoppable force for women’s rights. So, the next time you end up with a Susan B. Anthony dollar, think big!
Tell your friend she’s got a little Susan in her. Reblog now to give her a little push.
Susan Brownell Anthony was an American social reformer and feminist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and co-worker in social reform activities, primarily in the field of women’s rights. In 1852, they founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was a woman. In 1863, they founded the Women’s Loyal National League, which conducted the largest petition drive in the nation’s history up to that time, collecting nearly 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery. In 1866, they initiated the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans.
In 1868, they began publishing a women’s rights newspaper called The Revolution. In 1869, they founded the National Woman Suffrage Association as part of a split in the women’s movement. In 1890 the split was formally healed when their organization merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Anthony as its key force. In 1876, Anthony and Stanton began working with Matilda Joslyn Gage on what eventually grew into the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage. The interests of Anthony and Stanton diverged somewhat in later years, but the two remained close friends.
In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and convicted in a widely publicized trial. Although she refused to pay the fine, the authorities declined to take further action. In 1878, Anthony and Stanton arranged for Congress to be presented with an amendment giving women the right to vote. Popularly known as the Anthony Amendment and introduced by Sen. Aaron A. Sargent (R-CA), it became the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
Anthony traveled extensively in support of women’s suffrage, giving as many as 75 to 100 speeches per year and working on many state campaigns. She worked internationally for women’s rights, playing a key role in creating the International Council of Women, which is still active. She also helped to bring about the World’s Congress of Representative Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
When she first began campaigning for women’s rights, Anthony was harshly ridiculed and accused of trying to destroy the institution of marriage. Public perception of her changed radically during her lifetime, however. Her 80th birthday was celebrated in the White House at the invitation of President William McKinley. She became the first non-fictitious woman to be depicted on U.S. coinage when her portrait appeared on the 1979 dollar coin.
On This Day in Herstory, August 26th 1920, the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution is incorporated, giving women across the US the right to vote.
After more than a century of struggle and protest in America the Women’s Suffrage Movement finally won, and women across the country were granted the same voting rights as men. (This is legally speaking, but in practice women still struggled. Black women weren’t given equal voting rights until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed.)
The Women’s Suffrage Movement officially began on a national level in the US in 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott held the Seneca Falls Convention. Stanton, Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Virginia Minor, and countless other women fought to raise awareness of Women’s Suffrage, and on August 18th 1920, Tennessee ratified the bill granting women the vote, and became the final State needed to win a three-fourths majority.
Just over a week later US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the law and so it became the 19th Amendment to the constitution.
Women across the country were able to exercise their newly earned right, when on November 2nd 1920, 8 million women were allowed to vote in the US Presidential election. Finally, on March 22nd 1984, Mississippi became the final State to ratify the amendment.
Susan B. Anthony was a primary organizer, speaker, and writer for the 19th century women’s rights movement in the United States, especially the first phases of the long struggle for women’s vote and the women’s suffrage movement
Full(er) context: “The one distinct feature of our Association has been the right of the individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at every step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of some sentiments that differed with those held by the majority of mankind. The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.”
–(A defense of Elizabeth Cady Stanton against a motion to repudiate her Woman’s Bible at a meeting of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association 1896 Convention)
#OnThisDay in 1973, suffragist Susan B. Anthony was fined after being convicted for voting in the 1872 presidential election, though she refused to pay it.
