Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) was an early leader of the American woman's suffrage movement and pioneered in seeking other equalities for women. An active abolitionist, she campaigned for emancipation of the slaves.

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, one of seven children. Her family had settled in Rhode Island in 1634. She attended Quaker schools and began teaching at the age of 15 for $1.50 a week plus board. When the family moved to Rochester, New York, in 1845, her brilliant father, Daniel Anthony, the dominant influence in her life, worked with important abolitionists. Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other guests at the Anthony farm helped form her strong views on the abolition of slavery.

Though her family attended the first Woman's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls and Rochester, New York, in 1848, Anthony did not take up the cause of woman's rights until 1851, when...