The Life and Contributions of Philanthropic Visionary, Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was an activist in many movements, including abolition, suffrage, and temperance. The intersectionality of these roles has led to her being historically remembered as a philanthropic visionary. She has impacted the way we advocate for change in the United States and has paved the way for future generations to fight for their rights. She does, however, have some shortcomings that are often overlooked. In both her achievements and in her downfalls, she can teach us how to be better philanthropists in our own ways.

Philanthropy is defined broadly by Payton and Moody as voluntary action for the public good. Susan B. Anthony can clearly fit into this definition because she spent most of her life utilizing her time to helping our legislative system progress in equal treatment for both women and African Americans, to an extent. Her intentions, as far as known, have always been for the betterment of society and our US government. She used her philanthropy to change our government because our government was clearly failing. Anthony is known best as an advocate. This is defined by Leroux and Feeney as “attempts to influence legislation or change government spending in order to achieve an outcome more favorable to a group’s agenda or objectives.”

Susan B. Anthony was born to a Quaker family in Massachusetts, but was raised in New York. Her family life gave her a strong sense of independence and individuality which led to her success as an advocate for change (Willard and Livermore). Her first major role philanthropy was during the Temperance movement working to create stricter liquor laws (Willard and Livermore). She joined the Daughters of Temperance in 1847. She and others believed that alcohol was at the core of domestic violence at the time. This was her way to prevent alcohol related spousal abuse. She created a petition to regulate and limit the sales of liquor in New York which received 28,000 signatures. Unfortunately the petition was disregarded because the majority of the signatures were from women and children. This is ironic given that they are likely the one’s being abused. This role was also her introduction into women’s suffrage. She stood up at a Son’s of Temperance event in order to speak and was shut down due to her being a woman.

When Anthony realized that without the right to vote, women could not bring about the change they desired, she started out fighting for her right and the rights of other women in the US to vote. She spoke across the country for many years in hopes of gaining supporters and gaining women the right to vote. In 1872 she and 14 other women registered to vote, expecting to be denied, and planned to sue for their rights to vote (Front Matter). They, however, were registered without issue. Several days later they voted. They were arrested nine days after the election for voting as the female sex. Anthony pled not guilty and was eventually fined. She fought the charges and refused to pay the fine, even after having offers for others to pay (Front Matter). It wouldn’t be until 1920, 14 years after her death in 1906 (when she was 86), that women would finally have the right to vote. Although Susan B. Anthony didn’t live to see the 19th Amendment she was instrumental in its conception through her actions of civil disobedience. This is the cause that she is most known for and why most people would consider her a philanthropic visionary.

Susan was also a self-proclaimed abolitionist. She and her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton utilized their notoriety as women’s rights activists to speak on behalf of abolition. In total, they gained more than 400,000 signatures on one petition in order to bring about abolition (Willard and Livermore). In 1851 she assisted in organizing an antislavery convention in Rochester, and continued doing such work until their efforts paid off in 1865 when the 13th amendment abolished slavery for good in America. Anthony and Cady’s efforts played a huge role in gaining supporters for abolition and in turn outlawing American slavery. This role further displayed her convictions and aided her in becoming a philanthropic visionary.

Now we will analyze her various philanthropic endeavors through the term intersectionality. This term typically refers to multiple social identities of individuals. Here we will use it a little differently: to talk about the multiple causes of Susan B. Anthony. The three we talk about here are all somewhat related. Her efforts in the temperance movement are directly related to her desire to uplift and empower women in society, because she believed that liquor was holding them down (indirectly through their husbands’ drunken abuse). She sought to get men in society sober so that women would not have to face abuse seemingly cause by alcohol. Continuing our analysis of her intersectionality, her efforts in abolition were made possible because she had already made a name for herself in her suffrage efforts by speaking to audiences across the nation. The combination of these causes has solidified her identity in American history as a philanthropic visionary. But there is more to her story than just her achievements. Her abolition efforts eventually led to the debate over voting rights for African Americans. This time period was not Anthony’s brightest moment as she seemed to give up some of her strongest convictions.

Something fairly unknown about Susan B. Anthony is that at one point she was not quite the outspoken advocate we like to think of her as. There was a time in American history in which women’s and African Americans’ rights to vote were debated almost in unison. After black men earned their right to vote, Anthony, as well as some other women’s rights activists distanced themselves from the African American cause (Adams). Susan began arguing against the black vote, in favor of making educated (white) women’s rights appear more valuable than the “uneducated” African American population. This is one of her biggest shortcomings. Instead of fighting alongside African Americans to earn their rights together, she threw them under the bus in hopes that it would fulfill her own goals. This could have very well set African American women further behind than they would have been otherwise. And at this time in history they definitely could have used some empowerment. After this separation, there grew a distinction between black and white women’s activists. Because of this, her actions during this time have been severely altered in American History, hence why this is a little known fact (especially in the white community) and does not generally hinder her name as a philanthropic visionary to most of today’s society. For our purposes, we can utilize this mistake as a lesson that if we fight the good fight, without excluding or harming the cause of another, we will make much more rewarding change. Today, we can learn from this mistake and work together to make our government work well for all citizens. After all, we are stronger together.

One of the biggest lessons we can learn from Susan B. Anthony came from her shortcomings. We can take away from her mistakes towards the African American community as evidence that we should not taint our own names and hinder another’s cause to save our own. Given time both goals could have been achieved. From her achievements we can also learn much about how philanthropy in America has historically worked. Often change to our government requires challenging it. This typically involves civil disobedience, such as when Susan and 14 other women were arrested for voting. While this did not make any immediate change, by the end of the trial there was much more support for the suffragettes and 14 years after Susan’s death that change happened and women could finally vote without consequence. Her efforts in the temperance movement also did not go unrecognized. While prohibition has not continued to this day, Anthony’s efforts to limit alcohol abuse did pay off. Not in a measureable way. Sometimes a cause can only do so much. While alcohol still plays a major role in our lives, domestic abuse is no longer considered socially acceptable, even when influenced by alcohol. We still have a ways to go, but we have come pretty far, and she did fight hard to get us here.