Feb. 15 (UPI) — Google honored the 200th birthday of suffragist and anti-slavery activist Susan B. Anthony with a new Doodle on Saturday.
Born Susan Brownell Anthony on Feb. 15, 1820, in Western, Mass., to a Quaker family, she was raised to believe in the equality of every all humans, a belief that inspired her throughout her life.
This year also marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, and Anthony is recognized as “one of the nation’s most important figures of the women’s suffrage movement,” Google said in its tribute.
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified Aug. 18, 1920, by Tennessee, giving it the support it needed to make it a law. It did not include black women, whose voting rights were secured through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and “language minorities” whose rights were secured in an amendment a decade later.
Black men were guaranteed the right to vote through the 15th amendment in 1870, but that right was taken away through the Southern states’ discriminatory Jim Crow laws until the VRA of 1965 was passed.
Nearly 50 years before the 19th Amendment was passed, Anthony defied the law at the time, casting her first vote in Rochester, N.Y., for which she was fined $100, about $2,100 today, drawing national attention.
“I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty,” Anthony said regarding the fine, which she never paid.
Anthony was also active in the American Anti-Slavery Society and helped escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad.
Her father introduced her to abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, who “first ignited her passion for social change,” Google noted.
She worked closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women’s rights for more than 50 years. Among their accomplishments, were co-founding the American Equal Rights Association, becoming editors of the Association’s newspaper, The Revolution, and forming the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Anthony became the first women in history depicted on U.S. currency when the U.S. Treasury Department honored her legacy in 1979 by placing her image on the dollar coin.
