(Editor’s note: In April 2021, the Bradford Branch of the American Association of University Women will celebrate its 100th Anniversary. In partnership with the Bradford Landmark Society, the AAUW will honor extraordinary women who have made a difference and have encouraged others to achieve equality and success.)
Since March is Women’s History Month, and the theme is “Valiant Women of the Vote,” we turn our attention to Susan B. Anthony, a prominent Suffragist organizer and speaker in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
On Sunday, April 24, 1892, Anthony spoke to two groups in Bradford. In the morning, she attended a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and stirred 72 women to organize a Political Equality Club, part of the State and National Suffrage Associations. In the afternoon, she was the main speaker at a hastily arranged meeting at the Wagner Opera House, located at the corner of Main and Chambers Streets in Bradford. Such a crowd! Every seat was taken, and hundreds had to be turned away. Anthony spoke for an hour and a half about the necessity for women to vote. She believed that women needed to vote to have a say in the laws that govern the land. She is known to have lectured about the issues of temperance, equal pay for equal work and other rights of labor.
Susan B. Anthony was born to a Quaker family on Feb. 15, 1820, near Adams, Massachusetts. When she was a child, her father, Daniel Anthony, was a farmer. He went on to be a successful cotton mill owner. Her father was a free thinker and often had guests who discussed issues of the day such as temperance, the anti-slavery sentiment, and even the Underground Railroad. Luckily for Susan Anthony, she was allowed to listen to the conversations flowing in the living room. Quakers believed in educating girls as well as boys, so she learned to read and write and was sent away to school in Philadelphia when she came of age.
Following her father’s financial losses in the depression of 1838, Anthony had to quit school and go to work. She earned small salaries teaching at various schools, being a governess or doing school administrative jobs. In 1945, the family moved to a farm outside of Rochester, N.Y. Anthony managed the farm for a while. The living room was again a gathering place for discussing issues of the day.
In July 1948, a group of women held the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Anthony’s mother and sister attended the convention, but she did not. A year later, Anthony made her first public speech at a women’s temperance meeting. She found that she liked speaking and was good at it. With a small allowance from her father and stipends from speaking, she was able to earn a modest living. Anthony’s friend, Amelia Bloomer, introduced her to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two became lifelong friends. Since Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a gifted writer and Anthony was a gifted speaker, they combined talents. This collaboration helped to make Anthony one of the most successful and sought after women’s suffrage speakers in her day.
Anthony and Stanton co-founded the Equal Rights Association. They were also editors of the association’s newspaper, The Revolution. Anthony and Stanton also co-founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association to push for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting and fined $100. This brought national attention to the suffrage movement. Her last speech took place at a women’s suffrage convention in Baltimore, Maryland in February 1906. Here she uttered her now famous words, “Failure is impossible.”
Susan B. Anthony contracted pneumonia. She died peacefully at her home in Rochester, N.Y., on March 12, 1906.
Susan B. Anthony did not live long enough to see women gain the right to vote. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution passed in 1920, fourteen years after her passing.
