Happy Birthday Susan B. Anthony!
Today–February 15th–is Susan B. Anthony’s 192nd birthday; there are great festivities in Rochester, including at her gravesite and at a luncheon for 900 people at the Riverside Convention Center. In several states her birthday is a legal state holiday, including Wisconsin and Florida. Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney has introduced the Susan B. Anthony Birthday Act to make the 3rd Monday in February a federal holiday, the first to honor a woman. For her 80th birthday in 1900, Elizabeth wrote a poem with this verse describing their speaking tours: “We met and loved, ne’er to part,/Hand clasped in hand, heart bound to heart./We’ve traveled West, years together,/Day and night, in stormy weather:/ Climbing the rugged Suffrage hill,/ Bravely facing every ill: Resting, speaking, everywhere:/ Oft-times in the open air;/From sleighs, ox-carts, and coaches,/Besieged with bugs and roaches:/All for the emancipation/Of the women of our Nation.”