On Thanksgiving Day in 1872, the 52-year-old activist Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting and fined $100, a fine she never paid. The incident was used to highlight the issue of women’s suffrage and helped lead to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, guaranteeing and protecting women’s constitutional right to vote.
This year is a hallmark year in voting history, falling on the centennial of the 19th Amendment as well as the bicentennial of Anthony’s birth.
Born on Feb. 15, 1820, to a Quaker family in Adams, Massachusetts, Anthony’s first cause célèbre was the abolition of slavery. She served in the American Anti-Slavery Society and participated in aiding the escape of enslaved people through the Underground Railroad. In 1863, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Women’s Loyal National League to campaign for the abolition of slavery. At the time, women were seen to have a degree of moral authority, though not political power, on social-reform issues such as abolition, temperance, and labor unions, all which Anthony championed during her lifetime.
Through her work, Anthony met and befriended Frederick Douglass, although the two developed a rift after the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1865, which granted African American men the right to vote. Douglass was a strong proponent of the amendment, while Anthony opposed it because this newly granted suffrage did not extend to women.
In 1869, Anthony and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, and Anthony continued advocacy work until her death in 1906. At her 86th birthday celebration, Anthony said, “Failure is impossible,” and 14 years later the 19th Amendment became law. The National Women Suffrage Association then became the League of Women Voters, still a political presence today.
Looking at voter engagement across college campuses in 2018, the national student voting rate was 40% for women, with black women at the highest rate, and 35% for men. Overall student engagement at Penn has grown from 25% in 2014 to 54% in 2018, according to a report from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement.
Penn Leads the Vote is looking to increase this gain on Feb. 22 with the first Eastern Pennsylvania Voting Summit, co-sponsored by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships along with the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development. Students from colleges and universities across the state will gather to learn and connect on issues surrounding nonpartisan democratic engagement, with a focus on student voting.
Maria Murphy of the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women and Sherisse Laud-Hammond, Director of the Penn Women’s Center (PWC), discuss Anthony, her legacy, and voting rights today.