Susan B.
Anthony was an American social reformer, African Americans rights abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Additionally, she was the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Partnering with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, they founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her hard work eventually paved the way for the nineteenth amendment, giving women the right to vote.
Susan B. Anthony was a woman who believed that everyone deserves equal rights, despite gender and race. She spoke publicly about her beliefs, no matter what anyone else said about her.
This hero was a woman who brought awareness for equality to the United States. A famous quote from this woman was the motto of the newspaper she published, The Revolution: “Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” The significance of this quote is that Anthony means that men currently hold extra privileges, while women are deprived.
Susan B. Anthony was an essential and influential figure in American history that had a beneficial impact on future American woman because of her hard work and tireless efforts to bring awareness for equality in America. Susan Brownell Anthony grew up in a politically active family.
The second of Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read’s eight children, she was born on February 15, 1820. Unfortunately, only six of the Anthony children lived to be adults. In the Anthony’s Quaker household, no toys or music were allowed, in fear of how they would distract the children from the word of God. Susan’s parents emphasized to their children the need for striving their best to make a difference in the world. The Anthonys also devoted themselves to the causes of abolitionism and temperance, therefore putting a positive influence on young Susan. Her father, Daniel Anthony was a respected Quaker, mill and factory owner, reformer, and believed that his sons, as well as daughters, should get an excellent education. He built the town’s first cotton mill. She was a precocious child, and learned to read and write at the age of three.
The family moved to Battenville, New York, in 1826, when Susan was six-years-old. Daniel prospered as manager of an even larger mill and could send Susan and her sister to a highly regarded Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia. Daniel Anthony’s good fortune, however, collapsed with a financial crisis that forced the Anthonys into bankruptcy, in 1837. The mill closed, Susan and her sister left boarding school, and the family filed bankruptcy. At age 18, Susan–to help with the family’s financial situation–took a job as an assistant teacher at a boarding school in New Rochelle, New York. After a year, Anthony took up teaching at a school in Center Falls until 1845, when her father, whose financial condition had improved, bought a farm near Rochester, New York.
Anthony moved to Rochester, where she remained on the farm until accepting a position as headmistress of the Canajoharie Academy. The city would become Susan’s permanent address for the rest of her life. There, she met many activists, who visited her family, including abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. This stimulated her interest in reform and she became involved in the anti-slavery movements. Some abolitionists prevented women from speaking publicly, viewing it as ‘unsuited to their feminine roles.’ But, William Lloyd Garrison encouraged women’s full participation on the subject, and Anthony gave frequent speeches on behalf of ending slavery. Anthony was inspired and influenced by the abolitionists and activists that stopped by her family’s farm.
No toys or music were allowed in the Anthony home for fear that they would distract the children from God’s word. The Anthonys stressed to their six children the need for each person to strive their best to make a contribution to the world. For their part, Susan’s parents devoted themselves to the causes of abolitionism and temperance, two causes that Susan would also champion. Anthony was by now clearly of a “marrying age.” Several men called on Anthony.
She was taken on carriage rides and to dances. But in the end, Anthony would turn away all callers. She would remain single her entire life. She never seemed to regret her decision.
She later said: “I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poor she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealthy, she became a pet and a doll.
” In 1851, Anthony attended a anti-slave conference, where she met activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two woman formed a fast friendship and alliance that dominated the movement, and would last for 50 years. Along with Stanton, Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. On March 13, 1906, Susan B. Anthony passed away. Still, women did not have the legal right to vote.
It wasn’t until 1920, 14 years after her death, that the 19th amendment was passed, giving all woman the right to vote. In recognition of Anthony dedication and hard work, the U.S. Treasury Department put Anthony’s portrait on one dollar coins in 1979. Susan B. Anthony is someone who America looks up to.
