WEBVTT - How Did Susan B. Anthony Work?

0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.880
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren

0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:12.080
<v Speaker 1>Vogelbaum Here. It's been more than one hundred years since

0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.720
<v Speaker 1>American women gained the right to vote with the passage

0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.000
<v Speaker 1>of the nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and we cannot

0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.600
<v Speaker 1>discuss the nineteenth Amendment and the women's suffrage movement without

0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:25.200
<v Speaker 1>talking about one of its most central figures, Susan B. Anthony.

0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.280
<v Speaker 1>The amendment was named the Anthony Amendment in her honor,

0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.479
<v Speaker 1>and years later, Anthony's stern image found a home on

0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:38.640
<v Speaker 1>the United States dollar coin, replacing President Dwight Eisenhower. So

0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.760
<v Speaker 1>how in one century did the woman who claimed failure

0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:47.600
<v Speaker 1>is impossible go from espousing revolutionary ideas to becoming an

0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:53.640
<v Speaker 1>honoree on US currency. Born in Adams, Massachusetts, on February

0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.880
<v Speaker 1>fifteenth of eighteen twenty, Anthony spent most of her childhood

0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.600
<v Speaker 1>in New York. Her father's Quaker upbringing I pressed upon

0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:04.880
<v Speaker 1>her the belief that everyone is equal under God. She

0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:06.760
<v Speaker 1>worked as a teacher in upstate New York during her

0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.760
<v Speaker 1>twenties before returning home, where she became involved in the

0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.959
<v Speaker 1>abolition movement, working alongside important figures like William Lloyd Garrison

0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:19.520
<v Speaker 1>and Frederick Douglas. Along with abolishing slavery, Anthony also sought

0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.520
<v Speaker 1>to rid the country of alcohol. She and her family

0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.880
<v Speaker 1>were active in the temperance movement. Oh When she was

0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.360
<v Speaker 1>denied the chance to speak at a Temperance meeting because

0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.360
<v Speaker 1>she was a woman, she partnered with Elizabeth Catty Stanton

0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:34.560
<v Speaker 1>and founded the Women's New York State Temperance Society in

0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.600
<v Speaker 1>eighteen fifty three. She had met Stanton, who had become

0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.759
<v Speaker 1>a lifelong friend and collaborator, at an anti slavery conference

0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.039
<v Speaker 1>the previous year. At that point, Stanton had already given

0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:47.920
<v Speaker 1>her famed Declaration of Sentiments speech at the Seneca Falls

0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:52.680
<v Speaker 1>Convention in eighteen forty eight. Anthony continued to be active

0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.320
<v Speaker 1>in both movements. For example, during the Civil War, she

0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.480
<v Speaker 1>helped collect more than three hundred thousand signatures on petitions

0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.920
<v Speaker 1>to abolish slavery with the Constitutional Amendment. After the war,

0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.760
<v Speaker 1>Anthony and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association in

0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:12.160
<v Speaker 1>eighteen sixty six, an organization initially aiming to secure equal

0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.400
<v Speaker 1>rights and voting rights for all black and white men

0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:20.000
<v Speaker 1>and women in America, but the Reconstruction era was a

0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.680
<v Speaker 1>sticky political time, there were fissures in the suffrage movement,

0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.000
<v Speaker 1>with disagreement among activists over whether to focus on the

0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.760
<v Speaker 1>easier goal of attaining black men's rights first and then

0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:35.639
<v Speaker 1>working on getting women the vote. Anthony's biographer, a contemporary

0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:38.640
<v Speaker 1>journalist by the name of Ida Husted Harper, wrote that

0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.720
<v Speaker 1>Anthony said she would sooner cut off her right arm

0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.600
<v Speaker 1>before she would ever work for or demand the ballot

0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:49.519
<v Speaker 1>for the black man and not the woman. The split

0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.720
<v Speaker 1>between the suffrage movement was deep, as are the roots

0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.799
<v Speaker 1>of racism in America. Anthony and Stanton chose to oppose

0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.160
<v Speaker 1>the Fifteenth Amendment, which eventually did give black men the

0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:04.600
<v Speaker 1>right to vote in eighteen seventy. Other activists like Douglas

0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:08.600
<v Speaker 1>and Lucy Stone decried their decision, and the American Equal

0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:14.520
<v Speaker 1>Rights Association disbanded. In eighteen sixty nine, Anthony and Stanton

0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:19.200
<v Speaker 1>formed the more radical National Woman Suffrage Association, and Lucy

0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:24.520
<v Speaker 1>Stone started rival group, the American Woman Suffrage Association. A

0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.160
<v Speaker 1>Stone in her group supported the fifteenth Amendment as a

0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.880
<v Speaker 1>step in the right direction and focused on a state

0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:34.280
<v Speaker 1>by state strategy to gain voting rights for women. By contrast,

0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.400
<v Speaker 1>Anthony and Stanton's group sought voting and other rights for women,

0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:42.960
<v Speaker 1>and a federal constitutional amendment to ensure them. Sort of

0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.200
<v Speaker 1>a side note, Anthony was also an adopter of reform dress,

0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.600
<v Speaker 1>which consisted of wearing bloomers and a shorter dress instead

0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:52.600
<v Speaker 1>of the cumbersome woman's ensemble of the period, which could

0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:55.320
<v Speaker 1>weigh up to twenty five pounds that's about eleven kilos.

0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.600
<v Speaker 1>She even cut her hair short, but after criticism, Anthony

0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.680
<v Speaker 1>determined that the dress distracted from the message and gave

0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:07.120
<v Speaker 1>it up. Although she never had the opportunity to vote legally,

0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.280
<v Speaker 1>Anthony cast a ballot in the eighteen seventy two presidential

0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:14.640
<v Speaker 1>election of voting for Ulysses S. Grant. For this criminal act,

0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.159
<v Speaker 1>she was arrested, tried, and fined one hundred dollars. She

0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.080
<v Speaker 1>never paid the fine. Anthony died in nineteen oh six,

0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:28.040
<v Speaker 1>fourteen years before the amendment she wanted was ratified. Before it,

0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.839
<v Speaker 1>amendments allowing for income tax the sixteenth of the Popular

0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.960
<v Speaker 1>Election of Senators the seventeenth and prohibition the eighteenth were

0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:40.400
<v Speaker 1>added to the Constitution. Although several states had already legalized

0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.800
<v Speaker 1>women's suffrage, on a national level, women gained the right

0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:46.920
<v Speaker 1>to vote with the Nineteenth Amendments, passing on August eighteenth

0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:51.080
<v Speaker 1>of nineteen twenty. It reads, the right of citizens of

0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.440
<v Speaker 1>the United States to vote shall not be denied or

0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:55.880
<v Speaker 1>abridged by the United States or by any State on

0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.159
<v Speaker 1>account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this

0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:05.440
<v Speaker 1>Article by pro legislation. Of course, merely having the law

0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:08.920
<v Speaker 1>in place didn't make accessing that right easy for everyone.

0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.279
<v Speaker 1>Native Americans weren't recognized as US citizens with voting access

0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.880
<v Speaker 1>until the Snyder Act of nineteen twenty four, and all

0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:19.800
<v Speaker 1>kinds of legal and social restrictions in the Jim Crow

0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.080
<v Speaker 1>South excluded black women and men from the polls until

0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:28.400
<v Speaker 1>the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. But back

0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:31.640
<v Speaker 1>to Anthony for her contributions to the passage of what

0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.560
<v Speaker 1>became the Nineteenth Amendment. Anthony was the first non mythical

0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:39.279
<v Speaker 1>woman to appear on a US coin. Figures like Miss

0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:41.880
<v Speaker 1>Columbia and Lady Liberty had appeared on coins in the

0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.279
<v Speaker 1>eighteen hundreds, and First Lady Martha Washington appeared on paper

0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.679
<v Speaker 1>notes around the same time, but the Susan B. Anthony

0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.560
<v Speaker 1>dollar was issued by the United States Mint in nineteen

0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:55.719
<v Speaker 1>seventy nine to replace the Eisenhower Dollar. At that time,

0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.440
<v Speaker 1>the second wave of the women's movement was underway and

0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.560
<v Speaker 1>the academic discipline of women's studies was in its infancy.

0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.040
<v Speaker 1>A Choosing Anthony as a founding figure for the movement

0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.279
<v Speaker 1>and for the dollar coin emerged as a logical choice

0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.520
<v Speaker 1>because she had been so committed to suffrage for so long. However,

0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.880
<v Speaker 1>with a modest marketing campaign surrounding its launch and the

0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:20.080
<v Speaker 1>coins similarity in size to a quarter, her dollar was

0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.880
<v Speaker 1>considered a flop within months, which was probably more related

0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.520
<v Speaker 1>to the coin itself than to Anthony's image being on it.

0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:33.320
<v Speaker 1>A suffragist, abolitionist, Tito Toller, and renegade, Anthony never married

0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.800
<v Speaker 1>or had children. And in case you're wondering, the bee

0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:41.200
<v Speaker 1>in Susan B. Anthony is for Brownell. There was a

0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:43.240
<v Speaker 1>bit of a fad from middle initials during her youth,

0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.440
<v Speaker 1>and she adopted the bee in honor of the aunt

0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.160
<v Speaker 1>she had been named after, whose married name was Susan Brownell.

0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.440
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode is based on the article Susan B. Anthony, Suffragist,

0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.159
<v Speaker 1>Abolitionist and Renegade on hostuffworks dot Com, written by Kerry Whitney.

0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:04.120
<v Speaker 1>Brainstuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how

0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.279
<v Speaker 1>stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Former

0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.880
<v Speaker 1>podcasts from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.160
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.