In February 1820, Susan Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father, Daniel, was a Quaker abolitionist and cotton manufacturer. Susan, a very intelligent child, learned to read and write at the age of three. In 1826, the family moved from Massachusetts to Battenville, New York. After teaching for a while, Anthony joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer in a campaign to gain women's rights. Anthony also worked as an abolitionist.

From 1856 to 1861 she served as an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. After slavery was abolished, Anthony demanded that women be granted the same rights black men were given under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1872, to test the Fourteenth Amendment, she voted in the presidential election. She was arrested and fined. She refused to pay the fine, but the case was dropped.

She, along with her associates Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, compiled and published The History of Woman Suffrage. In 1888 Anthony organized the International Council of Women and in 1904 the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. She was acclaimed worldwide for her great contribution to women's suffrage. Susan B. Anthony died on March 13, 1906, in Rochester, New York. She did not live long enough to see women win the right to vote in 1919.

Taken from Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack.