The woman that never gave up - Susan B Anthony
How can you fight more than 50 years for something you deserve, and never get it? How can you die at old age after you fought an entire lifetime for a basic right you deserved, without getting it? A fight for equal rights demands a lot of determination, the ability to face hardship and will power. You should expect the struggle to last a long time. But what do you do when it takes years, dozens of years, more than the protestors’ lifetime?
This was the story of Suan B Anthony, one of the most prominent faces of the voting rights struggles in the United Stats. She is well known now in her homeland, and probably her story is not well enough known to the general public elsewehre. It was one of the most important equality struggles in history, one the affects us to this day. A struggle that last over 70 years, to get one basic right. One that all the current fights stand on and are based on.
And still, at one moment, after more than 20 years of fight, she voted. She voted and thought that her fight succeeded, only to find all the powers continuing to act against her and fail her. And maybe that’s where her secret lies - she was able to take this hard, disappointing moment, and turn it into her most defining moment.
Suan B Anthony was born in 1820 in Massachusetts, and grew up in Rochester, New York. In the world she was born to, women were considered the property of men - the father or the husband; couldn’t own property; lacked access to education. They weren’t considered equal citizens of the United States. Anthony, whose family had tradition of social activity and religious belief, joined the temperance movement against alcohol consumption. As part of her activism, she wanted to carry speeches at the movement’s conferences. But soon she found out that she couldn’t do that, because she was a woman. Anthony tried to fight this decision, unsuccessfully. And so, those who didn’t let her speak, received one of the greatest speakers in history.
In 1852, at age 32, tired of the discrimination she’s experienced for years, Anthony helped organize the convention of the women’s rights movement. She didn’t start it, the first convention was already in 1848. When she arrived, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was 5 years older than her, one of the first leaders of the movement. They became good friends and comrades, the two leaders of the American suffragist movement.
Anthony devoted her life to the fight. She never married, never had children, she also didn’t live in her own place, but stayed with friends and in hotels. She toured the country, organized conferences, gave speeches, published a newspaper, signed petitions. All her money was devoted to this goal. A few years later, Anthony and Stanton started their own organization, for women’s rights, when they thought that their struggle wasn’t given enough space in the existing movement, which also included men. The goal slowly started to catch momentum, different countries gave voting rights to women. The struggle started to crack the glass ceiling, on which the American men sat comfortably.
And then, in the year 1872, after 21 years of struggle, her opportunity came. Anthony, who always went with the law and by the law, whose entire life was dedicated to trying to change the law, saw that it enables her to vote. That was the moment she’s been waiting for since the beginning, maybe her entire life.
She was based on the amendment to the American constitution, which was made after the fight for the rights of African Americans. And so it said: "all persons born and naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States”.
And according to Anthony, as citizens, they’re entitled to civil right. Which includes, of course, the right to vote. The fact that the citizen is a woman shouldn’t prevent this right. What’s more sensible than that?
Anthony, accompanied by the her sisters and other women, went into the voting registration office in her city, Rochester. What made sense to her, was strange and foreign to the men that sat in the office and never seen women entering it. Their immediate response was to say no.
Anthony told them about the amendment and the paragraph in New York’s constitution, that didn’t refer to gender. They weren’t very impressed. Anthony had no time for that. Law and justice were by her side, and she wasn’t going to stay silent. If you don’t register us to vote, she said, I will sue you personally and ask for damages. That sounded more serious, and they went and consulted with their supervisor, who wasn’t stupid. He said, that it’s better for them to register her, and then the felony won’t be on them, but on the women. No one knew what was really the right thing to do. Overall, 14 women registered to vote that day.
She did it. She’s going to vote in the elections, for the first time at age 52, officially, by law.
The story made it to the media, that went crazy. One local newspaper called to arrest the men that registered her, and another claimed that "Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon”, and said that the women should be prosecuted if they choose to vote.
On election day, the women came to vote, legally registered. The men at the election office again faced a decision. They knew they could be prosecuted themselves, if the allow the women to vote and it’s against the law. According to Anthony, they will be prosecuted if they don’t allow them to vote. With a majority vote of two against one, they decided to let them vote. Whatever they do, that could be sued by someone.
“Well I have been & gone & done it!!--positively voted the Republican ticket--strait this a.m. at 7 Oclock”, she wrote to her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
And then she went on and described the continuation of the struggle. She already knew people will fight her for this vote, that even though she’s right, they won’t give it to her so easily. But you can also see exclamation marks of a woman that until now only looked in from the outside, and finally was able to get it, to vote, to belong. For one sweet moment in her life, to be equal.
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| Susan B Anthony on her 50th birthday, 1870 |
In the days following the vote, Anthony sat with her lawyer and prepared future lawsuit of women who weren’t allowed to vote. Her ballot was still counted. About a week after the elections, a salt manufacturer from Rochester filed a complaint againt the vote. About two weeks after she voted, Anthony got arrested. The policemen came to her Rochester home, sat down and explained the situation to her. She insisted on being arrested the same as a man would, and be handcuffed. When she arrived at the detention cell, she saw not only the other women who voted, but also the men from the election office. "The same dingy little room where, in the olden days, fugitive slaves were examined and returned to their masters”, she said of that cell, when describing the situation. Of all the women, only Anthony eventually stood trial.
"I never dreamed of the U. S. officers prosecuting me for voting--thought only that if I was refused I should bring action against the inspectors-- But "Uncle Sam" waxes wroth with holy indignation at such violation of his laws!!"
Out of all that struggle, readiness, preparation and accurate arguments; a lifetime of sacrifice for equality and one basic right; Anthony, who was no stranger to fighting, was simply insulted.
In May 1873 she stood trial for voting for a member of Congress "knowingly, wrongfully, and unlawfully… without having a lawful right to vote,....the said Susan B. Anthony being then and there a person of the female sex."
And that was the turning point. Anthony, who understood the situation, didn’t let media control the story. She went out and used the PR it got her to spread her message. Until her trial began, she passed from city to city and spoke:
"Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?"
Anthony and her lawyer truly didn’t believe she’d be tried, let alone convicted. They acted by a completely valid and sensible interpretation of the law. But the New York Times said, that this interpretation can’t win the trial because the amendment was legislated for totally different reasons. Not for women to vote.
Not everyday does one get to play a significant role in a historic event, and that was the opportunity that fell into the arms of Hunt, the judge in Anthony’s trial. He as well needed to decide which side of history he wanted to be on. The judge skipped proper legal proceedings, and didn’t let the jury, who could acquit Anthony, make a verdict. He simply ruled that even if she believed that she was acting according to the law, women don’t have the right to vote, and therefore she is guilty. Anthony was furious.
And then, on the third day, before the sentence was given, Judge Hunt ask Anthony if she wanted to say something. Of course she did.
“Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government”.
The judge warned her, but she didn’t stop.
And just as you would help a fleeing slave and hand him a glass of water, even if it were against the law, so are women now, looking for their freedom. And like the slaves took their freedom, so am I, said Anthony, planning to take my freedom at every chance I get. She talked about the constitution and its amendments, promising freedom to Americans, but she never receives it.
She finally sat down, and got fined a 100 dollars, and legal expenses.
I have debt because I spent all my fortune on my activities for women’s rights, she said. I plan to pay every penny of this debt, but the fine because of this unjust claim, I will not pay. And in order to prevent an appeal to the supreme court, Hunt said she wouldn’t stay in arrest, even if she doesn’t pay the fine. He didn’t want to give any more power to her struggle.
Two years later, the supreme court stopped the option for women to try and get voting rights through the legal system.
Anthony kept using her trial, that one short, sweet moment when she got a chance to participate in the democratic process, to advance her goal. Her fire didn’t blow out, and the hurdles didn’t set her back. On the contrary, she always thought of new ways to get her rights. Her struggle became more known, and slowly more and more public support. She celebrated her 80th birthday with an invitation of President McKinley to the white house.
One of the newspapers in New York said, that there’s no doubt that Anthony is the winner of the trial. Even the fine the go “does not rule out the fact that...women voted, and went home, and the world jogged on as before”.
But maybe it was Susan B Anthony, who never looked sideways or backwards, that started to jog the world.
This moment of her vote in 1872, remained her only vote. She continued her activity until her death at age 86. Women in the United States got the right to vote only 14 years later. And with her struggle she left billions of women around the world the right to vote, be elected, study, get divorced, own property. To be human being by law.
Only in 2016 a woman ran for presidency from one of the big parties for the first time. On election day, the women who were born over a 100 years after Anthony, went to vote. They got this right from birth, and can also dream of being elected themselves. On election day, they went to her grave, and stood in line, just to put a sticker on it, with one saying only:
“I voted”.
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| Photo by DanielPenfield |
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