I would like to study Susan B. Anthony for my Famous American project.  Anthony was a leading activist for women's rights during the late 1800's.  She was born February 15, 1820 near Adams, Massachusetts.  I would like to study her because I have been to Massachusetts and I did not kmow she was born there before, so I would like to find out more about her birthplace.

Read this link for more info on Susan B. Anthony

Listen to an Interview with Susan B. Anthony

            Susan B. Anthony was a reformer who campaigned for women’s rights.  She helped organize the woman’s suffrage movement.  Because of her today woman have the right to vote.

            Susan B. Anthony was born near Adams, Massachusetts on February 15, 1820.  She was one out of eight children to Daniel and Lucy Anthony.  Her parents were reformers, they were anti slavery.  In 1824 Susan’s grandmother taught her how to read.  Susan loved reading and did it so often it caused her left eye to cross.  In later years it made her feel self conscious.  She moved to Battenville, New York in 1926.  At age twelve she worked in her father’s mill.  Anthony became a Quaker like her father at age thirteen.  Susan’s father believed that boys and girls should have a good education.  Susan was home schooled for many years.  When Susan was seventeen she went to Miss Moulson’s Advanced School for Girls.  The school was in Philadelphia, 300 miles from home.  Anthony started to teach at age nineteen, but she found it unfair because men got paid more than women.  Woman weren’t allowed to vote or own property.  So that’s when she knew what her dream was going to be, a fighter for women’s rights.  In 1835 to 1839 she spent her summers teaching.

            In 1851, Susan quit teaching and started to work to change the laws that were unfair to women.  In this year Susan met Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton was also a reformer.  In 1854, Susan and Elizabeth created a petition.  The petition asked for changes in the law, they were asking for women to have equal rights.  Despite the legislators respecting what she said they did not change the law.  Susan and Elizabeth worked on many petitions together; the first to be passed was in 1860.  This petition gave married women in New York the right to own property, and that was the beginning of the new change for women’s rights.

Susan and her family were part of the Underground Railroad, a group who helped slaves escape from the South to the North and freedom.  Susan was an abolitionist.  She helped create a petition in 1864 to end slavery.  In 1865, Congress passed the thirteenth Amendment to free the slaves.  

In 1872, Susan was arrested for voting and was brought to trial.  She did not go to jail however the judge found her guilty and fined her.   In 1906, Susan spoke at a national woman suffrage meeting, she died a month later.  In 1920, Congress passed the nineteenth Amendment.  Many people called it the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.  It gave women the right to vote.                     

Bibliography

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/anthonysusanb/ig/Susan-B--Anthony/SusanBAnthony-.--2s.htm

Picture of Susan B. Anthony

Davis, Lucile.  Susan B. Anthony.  Minnesota:  Capstone Press, 1998.

Gehret, Jeanne.  Susan B. Anthony And Justice For All.  New York: Verbal Images Press, 1994. 

McLeese, Don.  Susan B.Anthony Equal Rights Leaders.  Florida:  Rourke Publishing, 2003.

Sochen, June.  “Anthony, Susan Brownell.”  World Book Online.  15 April 2010.  http://worldbookonline.com. 

“Western New York Suffragists.”  16 April 2010.  http://www.winningthevote.org/sbanthony.html.