Voters mark historic election at Susan B. Anthony’s grave
ROCHESTER, N.Y.— As voters streamed to polling stations to cast their ballots, a very different place was also drawing hundreds of people with democracy on their minds: Mount Hope Cemetery.
It is the final resting place of Susan B. Anthony, the 19th-century suffragette and social activist who fought for the right of women to vote — but who died in 1906, 14 years before women were given the right to cast ballots in the U.S.
Anthony’s gravestone was covered in “I Voted” stickers — placed there on election day, which saw voters for the first time marking ballots with the name of the female presidential candidate from a major party.
“I’m voting for the first woman president,” Gillian Paris, who affixed her sticker to Anthony’s marker shortly after sunrise, told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. “As a woman I can vote because of the sacrifices she made.”
A steady stream of people lined up at Mount Hope Cemetery, starting before dawn, to pay respects to the women’s suffrage leader.
Democrat Lovely Warren is the city’s first female mayor, and she passed out stickers with Anthony’s image to visitors.
She told the New York Times that “if I could do back flips, I would be doing back flips.
“To me, that means, as a woman, there are no shackles and no chains to what we can accomplish,” she said.