名人軼事61:Susan B. Anthony: She Fought for U.S. Women's Right to

Susan B. Anthony: She Fought for U.S. Women's Right to Vote

Written by Shelley Gollust

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

People in America, a program in Special English on the Voice of America. In

the eighteen-fifties, women in the United States began to try to gain the same

rights as men. One woman was a leader in the campaign to gain women the right

to vote.

I'm Stan Busby.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Shirley Griffith. Today we tell about a fighter for rights for women,

Susan B. Anthony.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

In seventeen seventy-six, a new nation declared its freedom from Britain. The

Declaration of Independence was the document written to express the reasons

for seeking that freedom. It stated that all men were created equal. It said

that all men had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

VOICE TWO:

Not every citizen of the new United States of America had one important right,

however. That was the right to vote. At first, the only people permitted to

vote in the United States were white men who owned property and could read. By

eighteen sixty, most white male citizens over the age of twenty-one had the

right to vote. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution

gave black male citizens the right to vote. These amendments were passed in

eighteen sixty-eight and eighteen seventy.

VOICE ONE:

Women were not really full citizens in America in the eighteen hundreds. They

had no economic independence. For example, everything a woman owned when she

got married belonged to her husband. If a married woman worked, the money she

made belonged to her husband. In addition, women had no political power. They

did not have the right to vote. In the eighteen fifties, women organized in an

effort to gain voting rights. Their campaign was called the women's suffrage

movement. Suffrage means the right to vote. American women sought to gain that

right for more than seventy years.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

One of the leaders of the movement was Susan B. Anthony of Massachusetts. Miss

Anthony was a teacher. She believed that women needed economic and personal

independence. She also believed that there was no hope for social improvement

in the United States until women were given the same rights as men. The rights

included the right to vote in public elections.

VOICE ONE:

Susan B. Anthony was born in eighteen twenty. Her parents were members of the

Quaker religion. She became one too. The Quakers believed that the rights of

women should be honored. They were the first religious group where women

shared the leadership with men.

VOICE TWO:

As a young woman, Susan had strong beliefs about justice and equality for

women and for black people. And she was quick to speak out against what she

believed was not just. Many young men wanted to marry her. But she could not

consider marrying a man who was not as intelligent as she. She once said: "I

can never understand why intelligent girls should want to marry fools just to

get married. Many are willing to do so. But I am not. " She did meet some

young men who were intelligent. But it always seemed that they expected women

to be their servants, not their equals.

VOICE ONE:

Susan B. Anthony became a school teacher in New York state. She realized that

women could never become full citizens without some political power. They

could never get such power until they got the right to vote. She went from

town to town in New York state trying to get women interested in their right

to vote. But they did not seem interested. Miss Anthony felt this was because

women were not able to do anything for themselves. They had no money, or

property of their own. The struggle seemed long and hard. She said: