Susan B. Anthony: Google Doodle celebrates American social reformer’s 200th birthday

Google Doodle celebrates American women’s rights activist and social reformer Susan B. Anthony’s 200th birthday and the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the US on February 15, 2020.

Who was Susan B. Anthony?

Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women’s rights activist who played a critical job in the women’s suffrage movement.

Susan Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read in Adams, Massachusetts, the second oldest of seven kids. She was named for her’s mom Susanah, and her dad’s sister Susan. In her childhood, she and her sisters reacted to a “great craze for middle initials” by adding middle initials to their names. Anthony adopted “B.” as her middle initial because her namesake auntie Susan had married a man named Brownell. Susan B. Anthony never used the name Brownell herself and didn’t care for it.

Born into a Quaker family dedicated to social equality, Susan B. Anthony gathered anti-slavery petitions at 17 years old. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Susan B. Anthony battled for women’s right to vote in the US and is perceived as one of the most outstanding figures of the women’s suffrage movement. She became interested in social change after meeting through her dad to noticeable abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison first lighted her passion. In 1851, she met reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, starting a 50-year partnership concentrated on women’s rights advocacy and together they advocated for women’s rights.

On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony went to a voting station in Rochester, New York, and opposed the law by casting her vote in the presidential election, resisting the law at that time, which denied women the right to vote. She was fined $100 (more than $2,100 today) after two weeks, which carried national attention regarding the issue. She reacted by saying, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.”

For decades, Susan B. Anthony stayed an active leader of the women’s suffrage movement, including serving as leader of the biggest suffrage association in the U.S. also, speaking to crowds the nation over to campaign for change.

In 1920, finally about 50 years after Susan B. Anthony first cast her voting form, women in America were at long last allowed the right to vote with the entry of the 19th Amendment. Even though this change did include women of color, the establishment was reached out to women of color until the section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.

The U.S. Treasury Department honored Anthony’s legacy in 1979 by placing her picture on the dollar coin, making her the first woman in history to be delineated on U.S. currency.

Susan B. Anthony Day is a dedicatory holiday to praise the birth of Anthony and women’s suffrage in the United States. The holiday is February 15—Anthony’s birthday.

Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) is a non-profit association that tries to lessen and ultimately end abortion in the U.S.