Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820 in Massachusetts. Susan taught school from ages 15 to 30 before devoting her life to reform. She and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, starting in 1850, became lifelong feminist collaborators. The tireless crusader spent 30 years campaigning for women’s suffrage. Raised Quaker, Susan became a Unitarian, but at the end of her life was an agnostic, according to Stanton, who wrote: „Every energy of her soul is centered upon the needs of this world. To her, work is worship.“ Susan’s professed „creed“ was that of „the perfect equality of women.“ While privately scolding her radical friend Elizabeth for editing the controversial Woman’s Bible, Susan publicly defended her. She also confessed: „But while I do not consider it my duty to tear to tatters the lingering skeletons of the old superstitions and bigotries, yet I rejoice to see them crumbling on every side.“ Celebrating „Aunt Susan’s“ birthday became an annual feminist tradition starting with her 50th birthday. At Susan’s 86th birthday celebration in 1906, while giving her last public address, she acknowledged other feminists and vowed: „with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!“ D. 1906.

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“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.”
— Susan B. Anthony.,The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Vol. I, page 197, edited by Ida Hustad Harper (1908). (Also see Women Without Superstition: „No Gods – No Masters“.)

“The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.”
— Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), Remarks at 28th annual convention of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association, January, 1896, pleading in vain with the association not to repudiate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible. Reprinted in appendix of The Woman’s Bible Part II (1898). See Women Without Superstition

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