Susan B. Anthony

Until the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law in 1920, American women were not allowed to vote.   Susan B. Anthony’s 50-year fight for women’s suffrage, or the right to vote, made this amendment possible.

Susan B. Anthony grew up in a Quaker home.  Like her parents, she believed the men and women should be treated equally.  In 1851, she began working with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another suffragette.  Their first success was the passage of a law in 1860 in New York that gave women the right to own property and to keep their children if they divorced.

Anthony also fought for the abolition or end, of slavery, and for the right of former slaves to vote.  After the Civil War, she was disappointed when former slaves were given that right, but women were not.  

As a result, she formed suffrage associations and lectured all over the world.  She saw women get the right to vote in other countries, but not in the U.S.  But she remained hopeful, and in a month before her death in 1906, she said, “failure is impossible.”   She was right.   Fourteen years after Anthony’s death, the 19^th Amendment became law, amd people called it is the “Anthony Amendment”.

In 1979, the U.S. government minted $1 coins with Susan B. Anthony’s picture on them.  This made her the first woman to be pictured on an American coin in general circulation.