Few people realize that February 15th is Susan B. Anthony Day. Though recognized by the United States it is only a special holiday in certain states, Wisconsin and Florida. The “Day” was originally recognized in 1920, the year women finally got the vote.
Susan Brownell Anthony was born on February 15th, 1820 in Massachusetts of a Quaker family. She used these her Quaker values and hard work, to accomplish unbelievable goals with a dogged perseverance that has brought women rights around the world.
The Anthony family moved to New York State from Massachusetts after the failure of her father’s business. She eventually went into teaching not wanting to marry and taught for years in Canajoharie, NY until making the decision that she needed more in her life. Moving back to her father’s farm near Rochester she was given the job of running it.
The farm was a place of some wonder to her as abolitionists and free thinkers often visited and stirred Anthony with their stories and no doubt brought her to her goal in life which was rights and equality for all.
After becoming acquainted with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she found the voice to her drive and together the two women set out to change the world, and they did. From temperance, to women’s married rights, to abolition, and then on to voting suffrage they tirelessly worked to give all citizens regardless of color, race or sex the rights they were supposedly given by the Constitution of the United States.
The sad part is neither lived to see their work on women’s right to vote come to fruition.
So on February 15th every year we celebrate a woman who believed in equality for all and the rights of every individual, not just for women.
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