The Speeches of Susan B. Anthony

Is it a crime for a citizen of the United States to vote? Anthony asked the question after she was arrested for doing exactly that, and in asking it she took the franchise argument to its constitutional root. If women were citizens, and the Constitution secured the vote to citizens, then her arrest was the crime, not her ballot. She did not live to see the amendment. The campaign she built carried it across the line fourteen years after her death.

The organizer who turned the case for women's suffrage into a half-century campaign and was arrested for casting a vote. Her speech asking whether it is a crime for a citizen of the United States to vote took the franchise argument to its constitutional root. She did not live to see the amendment that bears her name in spirit. The work she built carried it across the line fourteen years after her death.