Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum Here. It's been more than one hundred years since
Speaker 1: American women gained the right to vote with the passage
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and we cannot
Speaker 1: discuss the nineteenth Amendment and the women's suffrage movement without
Speaker 1: talking about one of its most central figures, Susan B. Anthony.
Speaker 1: The amendment was named the Anthony Amendment in her honor,
Speaker 1: and years later, Anthony's stern image found a home on
Speaker 1: the United States dollar coin, replacing President Dwight Eisenhower. So
Speaker 1: how in one century did the woman who claimed failure
Speaker 1: is impossible go from espousing revolutionary ideas to becoming an
Speaker 1: honoree on US currency. Born in Adams, Massachusetts, on February
Speaker 1: fifteenth of eighteen twenty, Anthony spent most of her childhood
Speaker 1: in New York. Her father's Quaker upbringing I pressed upon
Speaker 1: her the belief that everyone is equal under God. She
Speaker 1: worked as a teacher in upstate New York during her
Speaker 1: twenties before returning home, where she became involved in the
Speaker 1: abolition movement, working alongside important figures like William Lloyd Garrison
Speaker 1: and Frederick Douglas. Along with abolishing slavery, Anthony also sought
Speaker 1: to rid the country of alcohol. She and her family
Speaker 1: were active in the temperance movement. Oh When she was
Speaker 1: denied the chance to speak at a Temperance meeting because
Speaker 1: she was a woman, she partnered with Elizabeth Catty Stanton
Speaker 1: and founded the Women's New York State Temperance Society in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three. She had met Stanton, who had become
Speaker 1: a lifelong friend and collaborator, at an anti slavery conference
Speaker 1: the previous year. At that point, Stanton had already given
Speaker 1: her famed Declaration of Sentiments speech at the Seneca Falls
Speaker 1: Convention in eighteen forty eight. Anthony continued to be active
Speaker 1: in both movements. For example, during the Civil War, she
Speaker 1: helped collect more than three hundred thousand signatures on petitions
Speaker 1: to abolish slavery with the Constitutional Amendment. After the war,
Speaker 1: Anthony and Stanton founded the American Equal Rights Association in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, an organization initially aiming to secure equal
Speaker 1: rights and voting rights for all black and white men
Speaker 1: and women in America, but the Reconstruction era was a
Speaker 1: sticky political time, there were fissures in the suffrage movement,
Speaker 1: with disagreement among activists over whether to focus on the
Speaker 1: easier goal of attaining black men's rights first and then
Speaker 1: working on getting women the vote. Anthony's biographer, a contemporary
Speaker 1: journalist by the name of Ida Husted Harper, wrote that
Speaker 1: Anthony said she would sooner cut off her right arm
Speaker 1: before she would ever work for or demand the ballot
Speaker 1: for the black man and not the woman. The split
Speaker 1: between the suffrage movement was deep, as are the roots
Speaker 1: of racism in America. Anthony and Stanton chose to oppose
Speaker 1: the Fifteenth Amendment, which eventually did give black men the
Speaker 1: right to vote in eighteen seventy. Other activists like Douglas
Speaker 1: and Lucy Stone decried their decision, and the American Equal
Speaker 1: Rights Association disbanded. In eighteen sixty nine, Anthony and Stanton
Speaker 1: formed the more radical National Woman Suffrage Association, and Lucy
Speaker 1: Stone started rival group, the American Woman Suffrage Association. A
Speaker 1: Stone in her group supported the fifteenth Amendment as a
Speaker 1: step in the right direction and focused on a state
Speaker 1: by state strategy to gain voting rights for women. By contrast,
Speaker 1: Anthony and Stanton's group sought voting and other rights for women,
Speaker 1: and a federal constitutional amendment to ensure them. Sort of
Speaker 1: a side note, Anthony was also an adopter of reform dress,
Speaker 1: which consisted of wearing bloomers and a shorter dress instead
Speaker 1: of the cumbersome woman's ensemble of the period, which could
Speaker 1: weigh up to twenty five pounds that's about eleven kilos.
Speaker 1: She even cut her hair short, but after criticism, Anthony
Speaker 1: determined that the dress distracted from the message and gave
Speaker 1: it up. Although she never had the opportunity to vote legally,
Speaker 1: Anthony cast a ballot in the eighteen seventy two presidential
Speaker 1: election of voting for Ulysses S. Grant. For this criminal act,
Speaker 1: she was arrested, tried, and fined one hundred dollars. She
Speaker 1: never paid the fine. Anthony died in nineteen oh six,
Speaker 1: fourteen years before the amendment she wanted was ratified. Before it,
Speaker 1: amendments allowing for income tax the sixteenth of the Popular
Speaker 1: Election of Senators the seventeenth and prohibition the eighteenth were
Speaker 1: added to the Constitution. Although several states had already legalized
Speaker 1: women's suffrage, on a national level, women gained the right
Speaker 1: to vote with the Nineteenth Amendments, passing on August eighteenth
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty. It reads, the right of citizens of
Speaker 1: the United States to vote shall not be denied or
Speaker 1: abridged by the United States or by any State on
Speaker 1: account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this
Speaker 1: Article by pro legislation. Of course, merely having the law
Speaker 1: in place didn't make accessing that right easy for everyone.
Speaker 1: Native Americans weren't recognized as US citizens with voting access
Speaker 1: until the Snyder Act of nineteen twenty four, and all
Speaker 1: kinds of legal and social restrictions in the Jim Crow
Speaker 1: South excluded black women and men from the polls until
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. But back
Speaker 1: to Anthony for her contributions to the passage of what
Speaker 1: became the Nineteenth Amendment. Anthony was the first non mythical
Speaker 1: woman to appear on a US coin. Figures like Miss
Speaker 1: Columbia and Lady Liberty had appeared on coins in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, and First Lady Martha Washington appeared on paper
Speaker 1: notes around the same time, but the Susan B. Anthony
Speaker 1: dollar was issued by the United States Mint in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine to replace the Eisenhower Dollar. At that time,
Speaker 1: the second wave of the women's movement was underway and
Speaker 1: the academic discipline of women's studies was in its infancy.
Speaker 1: A Choosing Anthony as a founding figure for the movement
Speaker 1: and for the dollar coin emerged as a logical choice
Speaker 1: because she had been so committed to suffrage for so long. However,
Speaker 1: with a modest marketing campaign surrounding its launch and the
Speaker 1: coins similarity in size to a quarter, her dollar was
Speaker 1: considered a flop within months, which was probably more related
Speaker 1: to the coin itself than to Anthony's image being on it.
Speaker 1: A suffragist, abolitionist, Tito Toller, and renegade, Anthony never married
Speaker 1: or had children. And in case you're wondering, the bee
Speaker 1: in Susan B. Anthony is for Brownell. There was a
Speaker 1: bit of a fad from middle initials during her youth,
Speaker 1: and she adopted the bee in honor of the aunt
Speaker 1: she had been named after, whose married name was Susan Brownell.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article Susan B. Anthony, Suffragist,
Speaker 1: Abolitionist and Renegade on hostuffworks dot Com, written by Kerry Whitney.
Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Former
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.