Noteworthy Kansas women
Submitted by Roxie on the Road
Susan B. Anthony, a fighter for women’s rights
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations … can never affect a reform. — Susan B. Anthony
Daniel Read (D.R.) Anthony moved to Leavenworth in June 1857, where he founded a newspaper.
His younger sister, Susan Brownell Anthony, frequently visited her brother. In 1865, she moved to Leavenworth for several months to help during her sister-in-law’s pregnancy. She also helped edit the paper.
That August, she spoke about extending the vote to Black men. Anthony was one of the foremost supporters of women’s rights, but men muzzled her about that topic. She also complained that her brother would not let her report about Black men’s rights, either. He wanted to avoid controversy, she said.
Sick of the silencing, she returned to the family home in New York. She continued to travel the country, speaking about women’s rights, including in Leavenworth.
From 1869, she annually lobbied Congress for a women’s suffrage amendment. She was unsuccessful.
In 1875, Susan returned to live in Leavenworth. A rival editor had shot D.R., the second time a rival editor had shot him. (So much for avoiding controversy.) She tended him for nine weeks.
When Susan died in 1906, women could vote in only four states. Thirteen years after she died, her nephew, D.R. Anthony, Jr., introduced the 19th Amendment on the floor of the U.S. House. The next year, the states ratified women’s right to vote.
