Women's suffrage advocate and abolitionist Susan B. Anthony died on this day in 1906. Born in 1820, she spent her childhood across various states, becoming a teacher at a Quaker school in 1837. In 1845, her family moved near Rochester, N.Y., and began serving as a meeting place for abolitionists, possibly also aiding the Underground Railroad. Around the same time, Anthony moved into advocacy partly because of her frustration with the unequal pay women schoolteachers received.
She ended up establishing ties to various Civil Rights icons, including Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. On her speaking tours Anthony advocated not just for the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage, but also education reform, women's property rights, and other issues. She was also an advocate for the Temperance Movement.
Her speeches often drew angry crowds and threats, but she persisted. In 1863, she was one of the founders of the Women's Loyal National League, the first national women's political organization, and used the platform to push for the end of slavery. Once that goal was accomplished, she shifted her full attention to women's suffrage, co-founding the National Woman's Suffrage Association with Stanton.
In 1872 she was arrested for attempting to vote, gaining her more attention from national media. She refused to pay the $100 fine.
You can learn more about Anthony in this biography published by the National Women's History Museum.
