Courting Confrontation: The Arrest of Susan B. Anthony
Courting Confrontation: The Arrest of Susan B. Anthony
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women attempted to vote in Rochester, New York, challenging section one of the 14th Amendment, which states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Allowed by election officials to successfully register and cast their ballots in the 1872 election, they were later arrested and charged for “knowingly, wrongfully, and unlawfully vot[ing] for a representative to the Congress of the United States.”
The U.S. Marshals were directed to take Anthony to jail in December 1872—the only one of the group indicted and brought to trial. During the trial, Judge Ward Hunt instructed the jury to issue a guilty verdict without any deliberation. Anthony was found guilty and fined $100. She later petitioned Congress to review the trial and excuse her fine, believing that she had been denied her right to trial by jury because of the judge’s instructions.
Despite Anthony’s tireless advocacy for a woman suffrage amendment, she would not live to see it enshrined in the United States Constitution. It would take almost 50 more years of civil rights advocacy and confrontation before women would secure an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited states from denying the vote on the basis of sex. Fourteen years after Anthony’s 1906 death, passage of the 19th Amendment, widely known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, guaranteed “the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex.”
Order to U.S. Marshal to Deliver Susan B. Anthony to County Jail, December 26, 1872
This order directed the U.S. Marshals to take Susan B. Anthony to jail on December 26, 1872. In U.S. v. Susan B. Anthony, she argued like many woman suffragists did, that the 14th Amendment gave her the right to vote as a citizen of the United States. Anthony lost her case and was found guilty and fined $100, which she never paid.
National Archives at New York City, Records of District Courts of the United States
Past Featured Records
-
Celebrating Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong
National Archives, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service“I want to be an actress, not a freak.”
Film legend Anna May Wong’s talent could not be contained by the racist casting of early Hollywood movies. Born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905,... Read more
-
The Maker of Pilots: Willa B. Brown
Willa B. Brown, February 13, 1943
National Archives, Records of the Office of War InformationAviator Willa Beatrice Brown (1906–92) achieved numerous “firsts” in her lifetime, many of them earned through her tireless advocacy to integrate aviation programs. Brown began taking flying lessons in 1934,... Read more
-
Featured Document Display: Remembering the Hollywood 10: Screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr.
Thursday, September 8, 2022 – Wednesday, November 2, 2022
East Rotunda GalleryEarly in the Cold War, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated allegations of Communist activity in the film industry. The committee’s mandate was... Read more
Black Wall Street: 100 Years Since the Tulsa Race Massacre
Thursday, April 1, 2021 – Thursday, June 17, 2021
Online“— were dead. Figures are omitted [because] NO ONE KNOWS.” —Red Cross Report
On Memorial Day 1921, a Black shoe shiner named Dick Rowland rode in an elevator with white operator Sarah Page. The next day,... Read more
Victory in Japan: 75th Anniversary of the End of WWII
Japan Surrenders
World War II, the bloodiest conflict in history, came to an end in a 27-minute ceremony on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, six years and one day after the war erupted in Europe. On that September morning in 1945, Japanese officials signed a... Read more
