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Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
– Speech in San Francisco (July 1871)
If I could live another century! I do so want to see the fruition of the work for women in the past century. There is so much yet to be done, I see so many things I would like to do and say, but I must leave it for the younger generation. We old fighters have prepared the way, and it is easier than it was fifty years ago when I first got into the harness. The young blood, fresh with enthusiasm and with all the enlightenment of the twentieth century, must carry on the work.
– Original Source: The Democrat and Chronicle, August 28th, 1902; quoted by Lynn Sherr, Failure is Impossible, p. 329
A short time thereafter Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Tilton were in the Standard office discussing the work. Mr. Phillips argued that the time was ripe for striking the word ‘white’ out of the New York constitution, at it’s coming convention, but not striking out ‘male.’ Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction to all he had so warmly advocated only a few weeks before, and said what the women should do was canvass the State with speeches and petitions for the enfranchisement of the negro, leaving that of the women to come afterward, presumably twenty years later, when their would be a revision of the constitution. Mrs. Stanton, entirely overcome by the eloquence of these two gifted men, acquiesced in all they said: but Miss Anthony, who never could be swerved from her standard by any sophistry or blandishments, was highly indignant and declared that ‘she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the ballot for the black man and not the woman.’
Harper, Ida Husted, The Life & Work of SBA Volume I, (Ayer Company Publishers, Inc, Reprint 1988) 261.
Susan B. Anthony’s address at her 80th Birthday reception:
I have received letters and telegrams from all over the world, but the one that has touched me most is a simple note which came from an old home of slavery, from a woman off whose hands and feet the shackles fell nearly forty years ago. The letter, my friends, contained eighty cents — one penny for every year. It was all this aged person had. I am grateful for the many expressions which I have listened to this afternoon. I have heard the grandson of the great Frederick Douglass speak to me through his violin…Among the addresses from my younger co-workers, none has touched me so deeply as that from the one of darker hue. Nothing speaks so strongly of freedom as the fact that the descendants of those who went through great agony—which, thank Heaven, has passed away—have now full opportunities and can help celebrate my fifty years’ work for liberty. I am glad of the gains the half-century has brought to the women of Anglo-Saxon birth. I am glad above all else that the time is coming when all women alike shall have the full rights of citizenship.
Harper, Ida Husted, The Life & Work of SBA Volume III, (Ayer Company Publishers, Inc, Reprint 1988) 1188.
Susan B. Anthony letter read at a meeting at Cooper Union addressing Black disenfranchisement:
To refuse to qualified women and colored men the right of suffrage and still count them in the basis of representation is to add insult to injury as it is unreasonable. The trouble, however, is farther back and deeper than the disenfranchisement of the negro. When men deliberately refused to include women in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the National Constitution that left the way open for all forms of injustice to their and weaker men and peoples. Men who fail to be just to their mothers cannot be expected to be just to each other. The whole evil comes from the failure to apply equal justice to all mankind, men and women alike. Therefore I am glad to join those who are like sufferers with my sex in a protest against counting the basis of representation in the Congress of the United States, or in the Legislatures of the States, those of any class to sex who are disenfranchised.
Harper, Ida Husted, The Life & Work of SBA Volume III, (Ayer Company Publishers, Inc, Reprint 1988) 1286-1287.
Susan B. Anthony journal entry after addressing a Black high school in Daytona, 1905
They are bright children but it is sad to feel that the moment any of them holds his head up, shows signs of being a citizen, he will have a flat stone put upon it. It is a hard fate that lies before the colored people of this nation who are specially gifted-—and yet the only way to save the race question is to educate both races, the blacks to be equal to their opportunities, the white be willing to share their privileges.
Harper, Ida Husted, The Life & Work of SBA Volume III, (Ayer Company Publishers, Inc, Reprint 1988) 1357.
Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.
Harper, Ida Husted, The Life & Work of SBA Volume I, (Ayer Company Publishers, Inc, Reprint 1988) 1357.