Susan B. Anthony Posters, Books, Video, Links for Learning
for social studies teachers, home schoolers, and theme decor for office and studio.

social studies > SUSAN B. ANTHONY < famous women

Susan B. Anthony, American Civil Rights Leader, 1860, Photographic Print Susan Brownell Anthony b. 2-15-1820; Adams, MA d. 3-13-1906; Rochester, NY Susan B. Anthony was an abolitionist, educator, labor activist, temperance worker and suffragist who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement. Susan was the second oldest of seven children; her father was Quaker and abolitionist, both parents taught self-discipline and belief in one's own self-worth. When one of Susan's teachers refused to teach her long division because she was a girl (who had learned to read and write at the age of three), her father set up home schooling. As early as age 16 she was gathering signatures on petitions, based on the rights granted in the First Amendment for citizens to petition their government, to the House of Representatives to abolish slavery. This amounted to an act of civil disobedience according the the “gag rule” the pro-slavery faction instituted to table any slavery discussion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Art Poster Print “Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” The motto of Stanton and Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution, 1868. The family finances were ruined in the Panic of 1837, a finanacial crisis and five year depression brought about by speculation. By 1839 Anthony had left home to teach and help pay off her father's debts. Her realization that she was paid less than one-fourth of what her male coworkers were lead to her interest in women's labor issues. In 1849 she left teaching and moved to the family farm in Rochester. In 1851 Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another vocal supporter of women's rights, and the two women often worked together for women's right to vote. In 1869 they formed the National Woman Suffrage Association and from 1868 to 1870 they published The Revolution, a weekly newspaper that demanded equal rights for women. In 1866 she helped found the American Equal Rights Association. And in 1869, she helped establish the National Woman Suffrage Association. For the rest of her life, she worked for women's rights through organizations like these. Going to every session of Congress from 1869 to 1906, she asked to a constiutuional amendment that would give women the right to vote. View of Susan B. Anthony's home at 17 Madison St., Rochester, NY, Historic Print On November 1, 1872, Anthony and fifteen other women in challenging the law that prevented women from voting. All sixteen women registered, voted, and were arrested but only Anthony's case went to court. The judge denied her testifying and ordered the jury to find her guilty. She told the judge, “I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court entirely on account of her sex.” She was fined $100 which she refused to pay. Sadly, Anthony did not live to see the 19th Amendment which guaranteed the vote to women become law in 1920. She died of heart disease and pneumonia at age 86 in her house at 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY, on March 13, 1906, and buried at Mount Hope Cemetery.

• “Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.”
• “That society is wrong which looks on labor as being any more degrading to women than to men.”
• “If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.”

Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words by Lynn Sherr - juxtaposed with contemporary reports and biographical essays, the words of this legendary suffragist reveal Susan B. Anthony as a loyal, caring friend, and an eloquent, humorous crusader.

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony: An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. Ward, et al -
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were two heroic women who vastly bettered the lives of a majority of American citizens. For more than fifty years they led the public battle to secure for women the most basic civil rights and helped establish a movement that would revolutionize American society. Yet despite the importance of their work and the mpact they made on our history, a century and a half later, they have been almost forgotten.

Stanton and Anthony were close friends, partners, and allies, but judging from their backgrounds they would seem an unlikely pair. Stanton was born into the prominent Livingston clan in New York, grew up wealthy, educated, and sociable, married and had a large family of her own. Anthony, raised in a devout Quaker environment, worked to support herself her whole life, elected to remain single, and devoted herself to progressive causes, initially Temperance, then Abolition. They were nearly total opposites in their personalities and attributes, yet complemented each others' strengths perfectly. Stanton was a gifted writer and radical thinker, full of fervor and radical ideas but pinned down by her reponsibilities as wife and mother, while Anthony, a tireless and single-minded tactician, was eager for action, undaunted by the terrible difficulties she faced. As Stanton put it, “I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them.”

The relationship between these two extraordinary women and its effect on the development of the suffrage movement are richly depicted by Ward and Burns, and in the accompanying essays by Ellen Carol Dubois, Ann D. Gordon, and Martha Saxton. We also see Stanton and Anthony's interactions with major figures of the time, from Frederick Douglass and John Brown to Lucretia Mott and Victoria Woodhull. Enhanced by a wonderful array of black-and-white and color illustrations, Not For Ourselves Alone is a vivid and inspiring portrait of two of the most fascinating, and important, characters in American history.
Also in VHS & DVD (1999)

Susan B. Anthony: A Photo-Illustrated Biography - A brief biography of the staunch supporter of women's rights who helped plan the historic Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Ages 4-8

LINKS FOR LEARNING : SUSAN B. ANTHONY

• Susan B. Anthony Biography
• Susan B. Anthony House, NPS
• Susan B. Anthony, Library of Congress
• Women's Rights National Historic Park
• Susan B. Anthony Trial, UMKC Famous Trials Site
• Legal History: The Life & Trial of of Susan B. Anthony (A big "thank you" to Melissa and her teacher Ms. Elan for the heads up on the Legal History site.)
• Stanton and Anthony Papers Project Online