Susan B. Anthony
Another prominent Quaker in the early reform movement was Susan B Anthony. A confederate of both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Susan B Anthony was a lifelong crusader for women’s rights, abolition and black rights. Born in 1820 into a prominent American Quaker family, she was surrounded by forceful role models committed to social equality. At the age of seventeen she was to be found gathering petitions in support of the anti-slavery movement, and in 1856 she was appointed New York State agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
It was in 1851, however, after meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that Susan B Anthony began to focus her efforts on women’s rights. In 1852, the two women founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society, and in 1863, the Women’s Loyal National League. It was the latter organization that ran the largest petition in United States history to date, gathering almost 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery.
Then, in 1866, these two indefatigable women founded the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned not only for equal rights for women, but also for the rights, liberties and freedom of black Americans. Two years later, they launched the radical women’s rights journal the Revolution, and the following year the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Both women, however, were often a little too outspoken and radical in their reformist views, and as such they frequently ran afoul of the more conservative voices in the same movement. The National Woman Suffrage Association was a split from the more mainstream American Woman Suffrage Association, and over this, and many other issues, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony stood far to the left of their peers. Nonetheless, in 1890, the two organizations merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
The high point of their association, however, came in their collaboration in writing the History of Woman Suffrage, published in six volumes between 1881 to 1922. In 1872, Susan B Anthony pushed boundaries even further by illegally voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York, which resulted in her arrest and conviction in a widely publicized trial.
Quite naturally, she refused to pay the fine, and to avoid any adverse publicity, the authorities let the matter rest. Then, in 1878, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton lobbied Congress to debate an amendment to the constitution granting women the right to vote. The bill was introduced by Senator Aaron A. Sargent, and when eventually passed it became known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. The bill was ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.