Susan B. Anthony was an early advocate of the women's suffrage movement. Born in 1820, she gained her first introduction to the biases against American women when she took her first job, at the age of seventeen, as a school teacher. During her first days on the job, she discovered that male teachers, who did the same job as she, were earning more than four times her wages. When she protested this the school's only response was to rapidly fire Anthony from her postion. After this disappointment, Anthony went on to join the antislavery and reform movements of the early eighteen-fifties. She worked with dedication through the Civil War, and saw the Fifteenth Amendment, allowing ex-slaves complete suffrage, passed through Congress. However, she, along with many women across America, was outraged that female suffrage was not included.
Once again disappointed, Anthony teamed up with her good friend and patron, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to found the National Women's Suffrage Association(NWSA) in 1870. The founders of this organization had played a critical role in the initiation of the Women's Property Act of 1860, which allowed women in the state of New York rights to property separate from their husbands. This organization worked to advance the suffrage movement, through protests, marches and other such demonstrations. In 1872, Anthony voted illegally and was arrested, but managed to stir up a nation-wide response to her protest.
In 1878, Anthony succeeded in getting a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage introduced in Congress. Although the bill made little progress through Congress, just the introduction itself was a landmark event. It was also the last major boost of the movement, for which Anthony is largely accredited. Over the next decade, Anthony, along with Stanton, took a more backstage position in the movement, and wrote over three volumes of the history of women's suffrage, as well as many shorter publications.
Susan B. Anthony died in 1904. Just fourteen years later, the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing suffrage to American women -the amendment to which Anthony had dedicated her entire life- was passed.
