Susan B. Anthony $1 coin
Rochester, N.Y. July 2nd, 1979. The director of the U.S. Mint came to the Susan B. Anthony house to officially unveil to the nation the new dollar coin bearing the suffragette’s image.
Hundreds gathered outside Anthony’s house on Madison Street. It was the first time the face of a real historical woman ever graced an American coin. And Rochesterians grabbed up tens of thousands of the new Anthony dollars in the days that followed.
In commemoration, Rochester hosted a weeklong celebration including a 500-person gala at the Camber of Commerce.
And there were re-enactments of Anthony’s trial for voting illegally in the 1872 election. One was held in the same courtroom in Canandaigua where she was convicted with congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn, then the youngest women ever elected to Congress portraying Anthony.
Clay Arnold is board chairman of the Susan B. Anthony House. He was in elementary school in 1979.
“It was neat the see there was anew coin coming out and obviously with the coin being the first woman depicted on a U.S. coin was very amazing. I do remember a little bit of it, yeah.”
The Susan B. Anthony $1 coin never succeeded with the American people and is seldom seen in circulation today.
“When the coin was first designed and minted, people at the time recognized that it was time to put a woman on a coin. And the fact that they chose Susan B. Anthony, I think is a testament to her legacy.”
Anthony was a pioneer in the fight for women’s rights and to get women the right to vote.
In a 3-volume history of the suffragette movement Anthony wrote of the most momentous reform that has yet been launched in the world — the first organized protest against the injustice, which has brooded over the character and destinies of half the human race. It consumed 50 years of her life.
And in her last public statement, 14 years before the 19th Amendment was adopted in 1920 that gave women the right to vote, Anthony predicted the outcome of the women’s movement.
She said, “Failure is impossible.”
By the way, as a protest, Anthony never paid her $100 fine.
