| 5 | 1872 | - 1 Nov 1872—1 Nov 1872: Susan B. Anthony casts a vote
By 1872, the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified. Reconstruction was under way, and many Americans found it obscene that only one gender could participate in the most basic democratic exercise. Championing the rights of women was eloquent suffragette Susan B. Anthony, who, before the war, had been an abolitionist and prohibitionist. The temperance movement radicalized Anthony, though not in the way its leadership intended. Barred by men from speaking at anti-drinking rallies, she turned her intellect and ire away from the distillers and toward a bigger target: America’s male-dominated political system. And so, on the first day of November, she and three other women talked their way into registering to vote in a barbershop in the Eighth Ward in Rochester, NY. The male registrars didn’t want to do it, but Anthony threatened to sue them personally. The ballots they cast four days later were secret, but their sympathies were not: President Grant and his Republican Party were more receptive to women’s rights than the Democrats.
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1847 - 1879 (31 years)
