Mother of Us All

RUMMAGING THROUGH my mother's cherished boxes of her children's art-works recently, I discovered a painting I did in sixth grade entitled "Suffragettes on Parade." Forty withered hags--obvious spinsters--bodiless under long black dresses and billowing bloomers, are pictured storming down a street wielding axes and coalmining picks.

This caricature of the 19th century fighters for women's rights prevails. The vast majority of American history textbooks ignore the women's rights movement altogether. The few that portray them at all present them as barren old maids, or Carrie Nations and Lizzie Bordens rolled into one. Now during this so-called "second wave of and re-evaluate the actions of those who dedicated their lives to a struggle against an oppressive system that deprived them of their personhood.

This Saturday will mark the 155th anniversary of the birth of Susan B. Anthony, a woman whose indomitable spirit and incomparable leadership provided force and direction for the women's rights movement for half a century. There is a danger in focusing upon, and celebrating, the life and struggle of one woman, because it can remove her from the movement, obscuring those who have fought beside her. Susan B. Anthony was a remarkable woman, one whose executive ability and drive has never been equalled in the history of American women. Battling alone, however, she could have achieved nothing: only with the persevering thousands who stood with her was she able to effectively challenge the cultural and societal institutions that subjected women.

Anthony was born on February 15, 1820. An active abolitionist and temperance crusader during the 1840s, she had given little thought to the woman's-rights movement. It was not until 1853, when she was barred from addressing an audience at a temperance rally because of her sex, that she found her true purpose. Her activism in the movement never waned until her death in 1906, despite years of public vilification, poverty and apparent hopelessness.

During the 1850s Anthony mct Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her life-long friend and collaborator. Stanton had the intellectual ability to conceptualize and develop ideas, but she had little speaking presence or organizational talent. Anthony's gift was as a speaker and master strategist of the movement. Together they founded countless women's rights and suffrage associations, organized annual conventions, campaigned tirelessly from Massachusetts to the Western territories, and co-edited the first three volumes of the extensive History of Woman Suffrage.

ANTHONY'S ENERGY and commitment was boundless. During the 1850s she spent three years traversing New York State (her home state), collecting signatures for petitions demanding woman's suffrage and the passage of the Married Woman's Bill. She charged from town to town, organizing town conventions and meetings, many of which were repressed by the machinations of the local government, and sometimes physically disrupted by town thugs.

During the 1880s Anthony edited The Revolution, a newpaper she had helped found. Its motto was "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less!" Weekly, The Revolution discussed woman's role as mother and wife, attacked the inequalities in marriage, promoted dress reform, and argued the case of the working people and civil rights. "It is for the teachers, seamstresses, and wage-earning women generally, rather than for the wives and daughters of the rich, that I labor," Anthony decared.

During the presidential election of 1872. Anthony led 16 women in voting. Jailed, she was found guilty and fined $100, which she refused to pay, saying that she would continue to "rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation in government." And later at her trial she added: "I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

Despite the extraordinary hardship and frustration she confronted daily, she never questioned the worth of her actions. It is unfortunate that she never lived to see the fruition of her dreams--the passage of the 19th Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Suffrage Amendment, in 1920. But Anthony did have the satisfaction of knowing, during her later years, that women's suffrage wasn't far off.

In her final public address, given at her 86th birthday party. Anthony rose to her feet and proclaimed: "The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. Young blood, fresh with enthusiasm and with all the enlightenment of the new century, must now carry on the contest. There have been others just as true and devoted to the cause. . . . with such women consecrating their lives--failure is impossible!"