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Guide to the Susan B. Anthony Collection
D1940.1
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Table of contents
Title: Susan B. Anthony collection
Dates: 1850-1984
Bulk Dates: 1900-1952
Collection number: D1940.1
Collector:
Winter, Una R.
Collection Size:
2.25 linear feet
(2 manuscript boxes and 1 oversize folder).
Repository:
Claremont Colleges. Library. Ella Strong Denison
Library.
Claremont, California 91711
Abstract: Susan B. Anthony's public career spanned a half-century. She
was a leader in the women's suffrage movement, temperance and abolition organizer,
ardent reformer, speaker, and author who spent most of her life fighting for
equality. This collection contains publications, ephemera, photographs,
correspondence and writings related to her life's work.
Physical location: Please consult repository.
Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English
Collection open for research.
All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to Denison
Library.
[Identification of item], Susan B. Anthony collection. Ella Strong Denison Library,
Libraries of The Claremont Colleges.
Gift of Una R. Winter.
Individual items donated by Miss Katherine Boyles, Miss Anthony's niece, Alice Parks,
and Ada Watkins Hatch, no date.
Biography / Administrative History
Susan B. Anthony (15 Feb. 1820-13 Mar. 1906), reformer and organizer for woman
suffrage, was born Susan Brownell Anthony in Adams, Massachusetts. In 1851 Anthony
met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1852 Anthony and Stanton founded the Women's New York
State Temperance Society, which claimed an equality with the leading male society
and featured women's right to vote on the temperance question and to divorce drunken
husbands. In 1863 Anthony, again with Stanton, founded the Women's Loyal National
League; employing a loose network of individuals and soldiers' aid and antislavery
societies, the league gathered petitions with 400,000 signatures, which were
presented to Congress. This effort marked advent of a focus on the federal
government for women's rights. The Thirteenth Amendment and subsequent debate about
securing citizenship for freed slaves introduced Anthony and her co-workers to the
potential for sweeping change through amendment to the national Constitution.
In 1865 Anthony became convinced that universal suffrage was the only just solution
to the challenges of Reconstruction. With a lecture on universal suffrage, she
worked her way east. By year's end, the core of women's rights activists in the
Northeast had reassembled to launch their first national campaign for woman
suffrage. Hopes for universal suffrage bound former abolitionists together in the
American Equal Rights Association, established in 1866. As its corresponding
secretary Anthony oversaw petitions to Congress and coordinated several campaigns to
amend state constitutions. She divided her time in 1867 between campaigns in New
York and Kansas, and with Stanton, accepted an offer of capital to launch a
newspaper, the Revolution, first appearing in New York in January 1868. Though the
Revolution preserves the worst pronouncements of Anthony and Stanton in this
period--opposing the Fifteenth Amendment and casting the enfranchisement of freedmen
as a threat to the safety of white women--it also captures their excitement about
women's potential and their growing rebelliousness. Their convictions about an
independent movement led Anthony and Stanton to form the National Woman Suffrage
Association (NWSA) in 1869; Henry Blackwell and his wife, Lucy Stone, set up the
rival American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which called for suffrage by
state, rather than federal, law. The strategy of the NWSA remained uncertain and
subject to change until 1875.
By the 1890s Anthony had access to the platform of any women's organization in the
country. Two years of acrimonious negotiations with Lucy Stone's representatives
from the AWSA succeeded in merging the rival associations as the National-American
Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890. Stanton presided over the new
organization from 1890 to 1892, when Anthony replaced her. Anthony served until her
eightieth birthday in 1900.
When Anthony died, she left an enormous legacy to those other generations. Her image,
words, and standards of work permeated the struggle for what women called the "Susan
B. Anthony amendment." So thoroughly had she become the embodiment of women's
aspirations for political equality that suffragists fought long after their victory
in 1920 over their competing claims to be her true political descendants.
(Adapted from the American National Biography Online, http://www.anb.org)
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection contains correspondence, photographs, writings, and newspaper
clippings related to Susan B. Anthony's career as a leader in the women's suffrage
movement. The content includes several articles written by Susan B. Anthony as well
as numerous articles written about her life's work. Although some of the material is
from her lifetime, the bulk epitomizes her legacy and how she is eulogized after her
death. The collection also contains numerous photographs and ephemera from her days
as a leading suffragist. Although the date of many of the pieces is unknown, the
dated material in the collection ranges from the 1850s to 1984 with the bulk dating
from 1900 to 1952.
The collection is organized into five series:
- Series 1: Publications, circa 1869-1984
- Series 2: Ephemera, circa 1900-1976
- Series 3: Photographs, circa 1850-1941
- Series 4: Correspondence, circa 1941-1953
- Series 5: Writings, circa 1880-1950
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
library's online public access catalog.
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell),
1820-1906
Suffragists
Women's rights--United States
Women--Suffrage