Women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19 Amendment. On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised this right for the first time. For almost 100 years, women (and men) had been fighting for women's suffrage: They had made speeches, signed petitions, marched in parades and argued over and over again that women, like men, deserved all of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The leaders of this campaign—women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Ida B. Wells—did not always agree with one another, but each was committed to the enfranchisement of all American women.Perhaps the most well-known women's rights activist in history, Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, to a Quaker family in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. Anthony was raised to be independent and outspoken: Her parents, like many Quakers, believed that men and women should study, live and work as equals and should commit themselves equally to the eradication of cruelty and injustice in the world.
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Women Who Fought for the Vote
UPDATED:FEB 26, 2021ORIGINAL:OCT 14, 2009
Women Who Fought for the Vote
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CONTENTS
Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906
Alice Paul, 1885-1977
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902
Lucy Stone, 1818-1893
Ida B. Wells, 1862-1931
Frances E.W. Harper (1825–1911)
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)
Women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19 Amendment. On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised this right for the first time. For almost 100 years, women (and men) had been fighting for women's suffrage: They had made speeches, signed petitions, marched in parades and argued over and over again that women, like men, deserved all of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The leaders of this campaign—women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Ida B. Wells—did not always agree with one another, but each was committed to the enfranchisement of all American women.
READ MORE: The 19th Amendment
Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, pioneers of the Women's Rights Movement, 1891. (Credit: The Library of Congress)
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, pioneers of the Women's Rights Movement, 1891.
Library of Congress
Perhaps the most well-known women's rights activist in history, Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, to a Quaker family in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. Anthony was raised to be independent and outspoken: Her parents, like many Quakers, believed that men and women should study, live and work as equals and should commit themselves equally to the eradication of cruelty and injustice in the world.
Did you know? Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton lived in a part of upstate New York that would become known as the "Burnt District" or the "Burned-Over District" because it was home to so many religious revivals, utopian crusades and reform movements: They swept through the region, people said, as unstoppably as a forest fire.
Before she joined the campaign for woman suffrage, Anthony was a temperance activist in Rochester, New York, where she was a teacher at a girls' school. As a Quaker, she believed that drinking alcohol was a sin; moreover, she believed that (male) drunkenness was particularly hurtful to the innocent women and children who suffered from the poverty and violence it caused. However, Anthony found that few politicians took her anti-liquor crusade seriously, both because she was a woman and because she was advocating on behalf of a "women's issue." Women needed the vote, she concluded, so that they could make certain that the government kept women's interests in mind.