Leader of American women’s suffrage, tried for casting a vote
A central leader of the American women’s suffrage movement. In an age when women were denied the vote, she campaigned, spoke, and organized petitions for half a century, convinced that a democracy that excludes half its population is a sham. In 1872 she deliberately went to vote to challenge the law, and was arrested, tried, and fined — which she refused to pay, in protest. She did not live to see victory: only in 1920, fourteen years after her death, did the Nineteenth Amendment give women the vote, an amendment later called the "Anthony Amendment." Her life proved that rights are never granted but won.
In 1872 Anthony led a group of women to vote, and was then arrested on a charge of "illegal voting." In court the judge simply ordered the jury to find her guilty and fined her a hundred dollars. She declared in the courtroom, "I shall never pay a dollar of it," and said the trial itself mocked "all are equal." She never cast a legal vote in her life, yet made women’s suffrage an issue that could no longer be ignored.
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