Susan B. Anthony

1820-1906

A suffragist and early women's rights leader, Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts, into a Quaker family. At the age of 17 she attended Moulson's Seminary for Females in Hamilton, Pennsylvania, until her father's bankruptcy and subsequent move to Hardscrabble, NY, which later was named Centre Falls. At 19, Anthony taught summer term at a Quaker school in New Rochelle, NY, before her return to Centre Falls to undergo surgery to correct her crossed right eye; a condition that later in life was the reason for her preference to be photographed in profile. As an early supporter of temperance, Anthony made her first public speech as president of the local Daughters of Temperance on March 1, 1849. She was a founding leader of the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York (1852) with her lifelong friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was an outspoken leader of the movement for women's rights, campaigning for equal pay for women, women's rights to work in any occupation, divorce law reform, as well as women's right to vote. In 1856, Anthony began work with the American Anti-Slavery Society, organizing antislavery lectures throughout New York. In 1869 she and Stanton founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association and from that time on, Anthony devoted her energies to securing the vote for women. On July 4, 1876, Anthony led a demonstration at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and for several months after planned with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to compile a history of the women's movement. Anthony continued to work towards women's suffrage and in 1895 made her first tour of the South, championing equality for blacks, campaigning in black churches as well as white churches and schools.

Source: Biographies Plus, American Reformers (1985)