Susan B. Anthony

Ida Husted Harper (1851–1931).
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.
Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill Company, 1899-1908. (BRA2225)

Susan Brownell Anthony (1820–1906) was born in Adams, Massachusetts. Raised in a Quaker family with a long tradition of social activism, she became a school teacher. Frustrated that women were not allowed to speak at temperance rallies, she began to meet with several other women activists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), whose influence led Anthony to join the women’s rights movement in 1852. Prior to the Civil War, she campaigned for the abolition of slavery. She travelled widely after the war, lecturing and working for women’s education and legal rights, among which the most basic and important to her was the right to vote. Anthony’s sense of justice and equality, as well as her leadership, was an inspiration to millions of Americans. In 1980 the government of the United States honored Susan B. Anthony as the only woman to be commemorated on legal tender, the one-dollar coin that bears her portrait.

Listen as curator Dr. Eric White talks about Susan B. Anthony during a tour.