“The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball – the further I am rolled, the more I gain.”
– Susan B. Anthony
“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I became curious about Susan B. Anthony because she was the only woman on a U.S. coin when I was a kid. My Gramma gave me a silver dollar for every special occasion, be it a birthday, a piano recital, a good report card, or the 4th of July. I grew quite a collection of Susan B’s in a big plastic cup on my bookshelf. And I learned that, when my Gramma was a kid, it was illegal for a woman to vote. Decades have passed since that discovery and I still can’t quite comprehend it.
There’s a great PBS documentary available on Netflix called Not For Ourselves Alone that tells the story of Anthony and Stanton. (I highly recommend!) What fierce and unique women they were. Last year on a road trip, I insisted my friend and I stop off in Seneca Falls, New York where Stanton lived and where the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in 1848. Here is a picture of me with statues of them marking the exact location where Susan was introduced to Elizabeth, a partnership that would go down in history.
What do you remember about first learning about Susan and Elizabeth and other suffragettes?
