Celebrating Susan B. Anthony Day

Okay, everyone else has the day off to celebrate "Presidents Day" -- but at Yikes we are celebrating Susan B. Anthony Day instead! For those unfamiliar with Susan B., Wikipedia offers a nice overview of this amazing woman's life:

Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to secure women's suffrage in the United States. She traveled the United States and Europe, and gave 75 to 100 speeches per year on women's rights for some 45 years. Susan B. Anthony died in Rochester, New York in her house at 17 Madison Street on March 13, 1906, and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery.

Anthony traveled so extensively on behalf of women's rights that she had the train schedule for the entire country committed to memory.

In 1851, on a street in Seneca Falls, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton by mutual acquaintance, as well as fellow feminist Amelia Bloomer. Anthony joined with Stanton in organizing the first women's state temperance society in America after being refused admission to a previous convention on account of her sex in 1851. Stanton remained a close friend and colleague of Anthony's for the remainder of their lives, but Stanton longed for a broader, more radical women's rights platform. Together, the two women traversed the United States giving speeches and attempting to persuade the government that society should treat men and women equally.

After the first American women's rights convention took place on July 19 and July 20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, Anthony took the opportunity to attend and support the women's rights convention held in Syracuse, New York, in 1852. It was around this time that Anthony began to gain widespread notoriety as a powerful public advocate of women's rights and as a new and stirring voice for change. [...]

In 1869, long time friends Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony found themselves, for the first time, on opposing sides of a debate. The Equal Rights Association, which had originally fought for both blacks’ and women’s right to suffrage, voted to support the 15th Amendment to the Constitution granting suffrage to black men, but not women. Anthony questioned why women should support this amendment when black men were not continuing to show support for women’s voting rights. Partially as a result of the decision by the Equal Rights Association, Anthony soon thereafter devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for women's rights.

Sadly, Anthony died 14 years, 5 months and 5 days before passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Women today owe a debt of gratitude to Susan B. Anthony, and to all the women who literally worked their entire adult lives to secure our right to vote. Thank you Susan B.!