By KENDRA BURDICK

We know president’s day, Valentine’s Day, but did we know this weekend was also Susan B. Anthony’s birthday? 

Digital art depicting the 19th amendment Women’s Rights flag. The flag was originally created in 1919 and every time a state ratified the 19th amendment, a new star would be sewn onto the flag. (Josie Burdick/Ethic Art)

Susan Brownell Anthony was a woman who had a lasting impact on the structure of our country. Anthony was mostly known for her work protesting and fighting for women’s rights. Along with this, she supported anti slavery by helping slaves escape and debating for their freedom. This was just the start of what she accomplished.

Born on Feb. 15, 1820, this weekend marks what would have been Susan B. Anthony’s 200th birthday.

She was born into a quaker family in Massachusetts, which shaped her perspective on life. Anthony was reared in the Quaker tradition and her was home pervaded by a tone of independence and moral zeal. 

Growing up, she was constantly titled to be a precocious child for the fact that she learned to read and write at the age of three. At this age she had learned that a lot of people didn’t believe that all people were made with equality, so along with her parents, devoted her life to helping solve this problem.

“There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.”– Susan B. Anthony 

Anthony had seven brothers and sisters, many of whom became activists for justice and emancipation of slaves, according to “History Live, Videos, and Articles.” When they moved to Rochester, New York in 1845, the Anthonys fought for anti-slavery activist and helped escaped slave Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, who would later join Anthony in the fight for women’s rights.

The Anthonys were also part of the temperance movement, which attempted to cease the production and sale of alcohol in the United States.When Susan B. Anthony was denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because of her gender, she was inspired to shift her focus to the fight for women’s rights. 

Anthony started to take matters into her own hands and voted in the presidential election illegally, according to the “Women’s History Education” website. She was then arrested and tried (unsuccessfully) to fight the charges. She ended up being fined $100—a fine she never paid.

Susan, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, decided to travel around the country delivering speeches in favor of women’s suffrage. Anthony soon became a pioneer in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which she founded with Stanton. 

The two created and produced The Revolution, a weekly publication newspaper that lobbied for women’s rights under the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). 1906, Susan was found to be dead. She once said she wished “to live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women.” Many were pleased to have greeted her wish.

The nineteenth amendment was known as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” and sometimes the “Elizabeth Cady Stanton Amendment” to honor their work on behalf of women’s rights.On July 2, 1979, she became the first woman to be featured on a circulating coin from the U.S. mint. 

Susan B. Anthony never married and devoted her life to the cause of women’s equality. She once said in one of her protests:

“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.” -Susan B. Anthony