Anthony, Susan B. (1820–1906)

U.S. reformer

Susan B. Anthony was a feminist leader and trailblazer for women's rights who spent her life working for positive social change. Anthony dedicated her life to various reform movements, including abolition of slavery and temperance, which eventually gave way to her leading the fight against society's overall oppression of women. Anthony sought legal reforms of restrictive marriage and divorce laws of the nineteenth century that left divorced women without property or a means of support. Likewise, nineteenth-century laws denied divorced women custody of their children and afforded women little or no legal recourse over domestic disputes. These oppressive social conditions for women were too much for Anthony to bear. Along with other like-minded early feminists, Anthony appealed to local and state legislatures of the Northeast to consider the plight of women, especially the most vulnerable who had little or no means of support or way of seeking restitution in a society favoring men and restricting the lives of women. Anthony led the way for general social reforms and fought for equal voting rights for women against opponents who supported disenfranchisement of women. She demonstrated a tenacity and commitment to improving women's lives not typical of most nineteenth-century women, although throughout her long life Anthony did share the limelight with many notable figures such as the U.S. women's suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Anthony believed that obtaining voting rights [Page 34]would be the best first step in eradicating other oppressive conditions for women and that women's public activism would help level the playing field in the domestic, social, economic, and political arenas. Everything she did was deemed to be for “the cause,” which she regularly referenced as being the central force of her being—to gain the vote so that future generations of women could break free of the chains of oppression and openly participate in public life.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, leaders of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, c. 1881.

Bettman/Corbis; used with permission.