How Susan B. Anthony became a suffragist
Learn more about Susan B. Anthony.
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News •
Today in History: Susan B. Anthony casts vote for president
• Nov. 5, 2026, 4:30 AM ET (Chicago Tribune)
Transcript
Susan B. Anthony was an American activist who pioneered the American women’s suffrage movement and presided over the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Susan B. Anthony was born to a Quaker family on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts.
A precocious child who learned to read and write at age three, Anthony attended a district school, then a school set up by her father, and finally a boarding school near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anthony spent her adult years in Rochester, New York, working with a group of activists in the abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage movements that included Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Anthony was an ardent abolitionist: she served as chief New York agent of Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society beginning in 1856 and helped organize the abolitionist Women’s National Loyal League during the beginning of the Civil War. Along with fellow suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The two traveled together across the country to argue for women’s suffrage and campaign in elections. However, Anthony’s civil rights record is marred by her exclusion of Black women from the suffragist movement.
In 1900, at age 80, Susan B. Anthony retired from the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She died 6 years later, in 1906, 14 years before the Nineteenth Amendment officially extended the right to vote to women.
A precocious child who learned to read and write at age three, Anthony attended a district school, then a school set up by her father, and finally a boarding school near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anthony spent her adult years in Rochester, New York, working with a group of activists in the abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage movements that included Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Anthony was an ardent abolitionist: she served as chief New York agent of Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society beginning in 1856 and helped organize the abolitionist Women’s National Loyal League during the beginning of the Civil War. Along with fellow suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The two traveled together across the country to argue for women’s suffrage and campaign in elections. However, Anthony’s civil rights record is marred by her exclusion of Black women from the suffragist movement.
In 1900, at age 80, Susan B. Anthony retired from the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She died 6 years later, in 1906, 14 years before the Nineteenth Amendment officially extended the right to vote to women.
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