Imagine if you will, just for a moment, what the world would be like today, if a woman couldn't vote, couldn't hold office, couldn't speak out in public, couldn't defend herself in a court of law, couldn't enter a profession, and had no legal rights to property, including her own children. Gives you pause, doesn't it? But that's the world a baby girl entered into on February 15, 1820.
Her name was Susan B. Anthony; the "B" stands for Brownell. Most school children today may know her as the lady who appears on a 1979 one dollar coin. But do they know that she devoted her life to the pursuit of equal rights in America?
Susan B. Anthony was a bright child born to Quaker parents, Daniel and Lucy Anthony, of Adams, Massachusetts. Luckily, for the young Anthony, her father was a forward-thinking man, who believed that girls should be educated, despite societal beliefs. He ensured she got her education, even to the point of denying her toys.
As a result, Miss Anthony was reading by the age of 3, and by the age of 19, she was teaching school. By the age of 26, she was the headmistress of the girls' programs of Canajoharie Academy, for which she received the grand sum of $110 per year. (www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/biography.shtml)
The amount was less than a quarter of what male teachers were receiving at the time. The inequity acted as the stimuli necessary to set Anthony on the road to women's suffrage. After a decade of teaching, Anthony quit and focused all her attention on the pursuit of equal rights; not just for women, but for black slaves, as well.
In 1849, in spite of the fact that women had no legal right to speak in public, she was giving her very first speech to the Daughters of Temperance. Her interest in seeing a ban on alcohol was motivated by the high incidents of abuse of women and children, by the drunken men in their lives. (www.history.rochester.edu/class/sba/third.html)
In 1851, Miss Anthony formed an alliance with Elizabeth Cody Stanton, a mother of four, who had begun her own quest for women's equality.
In 1853, the pair founded the "Women's State Temperance Society of New York." (www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/biography.shtml)
During this time, a failed petition attempt imploring the American government for stronger liquor laws, and signed by non-people (women and children), helped Anthony determine that to succeed in obtaining rights for women, women would first need the right to vote.
But there were other issues that irked her, and in 1854, she began to speak out against slavery. The Civil War followed in 1861, and that was followed, in 1872, with the American Congress decision to give blacks, that's black males, the vote with the 14th and 15th amendments.
During this time period, in 1866, the feisty team of Anthony and Stanton also formed the American Equal Rights Association. This led to the weekly publication of "The Revolution" (1868-70), a newspaper that gave voice to Anthony's strong beliefs on the plight of women in society. The paper's masthead read, ""Men their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less." (www.susanbanthonyhouse.org/biography.shtml)
Anthony continued her campaign against a male-dominated society, well into the end of the 19th century; in fact, so much of her time was spent traveling and speaking that she had no time for marriage, or children. Unlike the majority of the women of her day, Anthony found fulfillment in her work; a dedication that could be seen as a harbinger of things to come decades later; a time when modern women would choose careers over families.
Anthony continued her pursuit of women's rights into the early part of the 20th century, challenging Congress to change the laws, having her efforts fall flat, and trying again.
Ironically, one of Susan B. Anthony's writings, a letter sent to Congress in 1848, pleading for equal rights for all, actually became the basis for the 19th amendment, the amendment which finally allowed women the right to vote.
Anthony pursued her goals up to her death in 1906. Following a presentation in February, in Baltimore, where she introduced her now famous idea that "failure is impossible," she succumbed to heart failure, the following month, on March 13th. (www.winningthevote.org/SBAnthony.html)
100 years after Susan B. Anthony entered the world, American women became legitimate citizens in the eyes of the law. On August 26, 1920, the American Congress finalized the 19th amendment giving women full voting rights.
Susan B. Anthony set the stage for many other improvements to women's rights over the years. But without her stubborn efforts to have the American government recognize the female sex as equal to the male sex, no other changes would have come about.
Ah, the difference one baby girl can make.