Unit 6: Gender Equality - Reading

A pioneer leader for women’s rights, Susan Anthony became one of the leading women reformers of the 19th century. In Rochester, New York, she began her first public crusade on behalf of temperance, the habit of not drinking alcohol. The temperance movement dealt with the abuses of women and children who suffered from alcoholic husbands. Also, she worked tirelessly against slavery and for women’s rights. Anthony helped write the history of woman suffrage. At the time Anthony lived, women did not have the right to vote. Because she voted in the 1872 election, a US official arrested Anthony. She hoped to prove that women had the legal right to vote under the provisions of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. At her trial, a hostile federal judge found her guilty and fined her $100, which she refused to pay. Anthony did not work alone. She worked with reformers of women’s rights such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer. Susan worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society with Frederick Douglas, a fugitive slave and black abolitionist. On July 2nd 1979, the US Mint honored her by issuing the Susan Anthony dollar coin. Although Anthony did not live to see the fruits of her efforts, the establishment of the 19th Amendment is indebted to her efforts, according to US historians.