Tireless Value
Why is the face of Susan B. Anthony on a one-dollar coin? There are lots of reasons, and among the most important, is the role she played in helping women gain the right to vote. On August 18, 2020, we celebrate the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
19th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Susan B. Anthony. Image courtesy of the National Women’s History Museum.
About Susan Brownell Anthony
Born on February 15, 1920, in Adams, Massachusetts, Susan B. Anthony and raised by Quaker parents, Daniel and Lucy, she took to heart the Quaker belief that “everyone was equal under God.” It was this belief that guided her entire life and placed her in situations that enabled her to become a tireless advocate for the right of women to vote. But it was not this cause that set her off on a path to pursue women’s rights.
One of seven brothers and sisters, she was surrounded by a family passionate about justice and the emancipation of slaves. Through her father, she met Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Listening to these men fired Anthony up, and she joined the movement to abolish slavery, giving many impassioned speeches to forward the abolitionists’ cause.
With her focus on emancipation, Anthony did not attend the women’s convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, where the women’s suffrage movement first began. However, her activist mother and sister did, and Anthony soon became involved in this new advocacy. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the two women became good friends traveling together for more than 50 years to further the conversation around women’s right to vote.
The two founded the American Equal Rights Association, and its newspaper, The Revolution, raising funds to support its publication with impassioned speeches that sometimes resulted in Anthony ending up in jail. Nevertheless, when Congress passed the 14th and 15th Amendments giving Black men the right to vote, Anthony and Stanton angrily opposed the legislation because it did not include women. It caused the two women to leave the American Equal Rights Association and the suffragists. They then formed the National Women Suffragist Association specifically to push for an amendment giving women the right to vote.
Anthony was arrested and fined $100 in 1872 for voting, putting her and the suffrage movement in the spotlight. In 1876, she led a protest at the 1876 Centennial celebrating our nation’s independence. Her speech —“Declaration of Rights”—written by Stanton and another suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage, boldly proclaimed,
Men, their rights, and nothing more;
women, their rights, and nothing less.
Twelve years later, in 1888, Anthony unified the two largest suffrage organizations into The American Women’s Suffrage Association. She led this group for the next six years, continuing to argue in favor of women’s rights, collecting signatures, petitioning Congress, and giving speeches.
The Susan B. Anthony dollar. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Although she died in 1906, Congress ratified the 19th Amendment 14 years later, giving timeless value to the work of the woman whose image graced the dollar coin first minted in 1979.
Find books on the Chicago Public Library website about the 19th Amendment and Women’s Right to Vote.
Read more about Susan B. Anthony and the fight for women’s right to vote.
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
General Women’s History and the Right to Vote websites; Illinois websites
The National Archives - See the historical document and check out additional resources
Illinois Issues: 100th Anniversary of Illinois Ratifying Women’s Suffrage
2020 Centennial Celebration Websites
Upcoming Programs on Women’s Right to Vote from other organizations
Rights, Responsibilities, and Roadblocks: Critical Stories Leading to the Passage of the 19th Amendment | Holocaust Museum, August 25, 7 pm, virtual presentation, registration required. Please scroll to the event on their general events page.
The National Archives’ Foundation has several virtual programs coming up throughout the remainder of August including a musical called, “19:The Musical.”
See our August e-news for additional virtual programs and events.