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.
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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:
