When Americans take to the polls on Tuesday, they will be following in the footsteps of famed suffragette Susan B. Anthony, who on Nov. 5, 1872, cast an illegal ballot to make her voice heard as a full citizen of the United States.
Anthony was born into a Quaker family in Adams, Mass., in 1820, a full century before American women were officially granted the right to vote.
As a young woman, she dedicated herself to social justice — campaigning as a teenager against the practice of slavery, and later as an adult, joined forces with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to further the cause of women’s rights.
For 45 years, Anthony traveled across the country, delivering thousands of speeches in support of women’s suffrage, facing ridicule and cruelty from those who took offense to her demand for civil rights.
