Susan B. Anthony: A Champion of women's rights

Susan Brownell Anthony was a reformer and one of the first leaders of the campaign for women's rights. She helped organize the suffrage movement, which worked to get women the right to vote.

Anthony was born Feb.15, 1820, in Adams, Mass., one of eight children. Susan's father felt that women should get as much education as they wished, so he added a room to their home as a school for his own children and others. The family were Quakers and believed in equality for men and women. They supported major reforms, such as anti-slavery and temperance (the campaign to abolish alcoholic beverages). In 1845 the Anthony family moved to Rochester, N.Y., and

held anti-slavery meetings at their farm every Sunday, sometimes joined by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.

From 1839 to 1849, Susan B. Anthony taught school. Her first paid position was head of the girls' department at Canajoharie Academy in 1846, where she taught for two years, earning $110 a year.

Susan B. Anthony joined the temperance movement. However, most temperance groups were all men who did not allow women to help the movement. When Anthony attended a temperance rally in Albany, N.Y., in 1852, she was not allowed to speak, being a woman. Soon after, she formed the Women's State Temperance Society of New York.

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Through her temperance work, Anthony became increasingly aware that women did not have the same rights as men. She met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leader in the women's rights movement in 1851 and soon devoted herself completely to women's rights, becoming a leader of the movement. She supported dress reform for women. She cut her hair and, for a time, wore bloomers, which became a symbol of the women's rights movement.

As an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1856, Anthony arranged meetings, made speeches, put up posters and distributed leaflets. Often she encountered hostile mobs, armed threats and things thrown at her. She was hanged in effigy, and her image was dragged through the streets in Syracuse, N.Y.

Susan B. Anthony published a weekly journal, The Revolution, which demanded equal rights for women, from1868 to 1870. She called for equal educational opportunities for all regardless of race or gender and appealed to all schools, colleges and universities to open their doors to women and ex-slaves. She also campaigned for the right of children of ex-slaves to attend public schools.