Trump plans to sign pardon for suffrage leader Anthony

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will pardon Susan B. Anthony, a women’s suffrage leader arrested for voting in 1872 in violation of laws permitting only men to cast ballots.

Trump held a White House event to announce the pardon and sign a proclamation declaring August 2020 as National Suffrage Month.

The U.S. is marking the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Many event organizers, mindful that the 19th Amendment mostly benefited white women after its ratification, have been careful to present it as a commemoration, not a celebration.

The amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, but many women of color were prevented from casting ballots for decades afterward because of poll taxes, literacy tests, overt racism, intimidation, and laws that prevented the grandchildren of slaves from voting. Much of that didn’t change until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The 19th Amendment is also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Trump said he would sign “a full and complete pardon” for Anthony.

Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, N.Y., and convicted in a widely publicized trial. Although she refused to pay the fine, authorities declined to take further action.

The 19th Amendment states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Visiting Anthony’s grave site in Rochester on Election Day has become a popular ritual in recent years. Thousands turned out in 2016 for the presidential matchup between Trump and Hillary Clinton. In 2018, voters showed up by the dozens to put their “I Voted” stickers on her headstone.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about the pardon.

New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, demanded that Trump rescind it. “She was proud of her arrest to draw attention to the cause for women’s rights, and never paid her fine,” Hochul tweeted. “Let her Rest In Peace.”

Many commemorations — such as exhibits inside the Arizona Capitol Museum, a gathering on the North Carolina Statehouse lawn and those that moved online because of the coronavirus pandemic — have highlighted a more nuanced history of the American women’s suffrage movement alongside the traditional tributes to well-known suffragists such as Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

“Like many movements, the stories are complicated and I think it’s important, as we have an opportunity to reflect and to celebrate, that we also are honest about how we didn’t meet all of our aspirations,” said Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, a Democrat born and raised in Puerto Rico who has helped to organize her state’s suffrage commemoration efforts. “It’s important to have these conversations so we can do a better job of going forward.”

Janice Jones Schroeder, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, said she was impressed that organizers of the state’s suffrage anniversary activities thought to include her in a commemoration event last September on the lawn of the Statehouse.

“At that time, American Indians were not even considered citizens of the United States,” she said. While the Snyder Act of 1924 admitted American Indians born in the U.S. to full citizenship, it was left up to the states to decide who had the right to vote, and it took more than 40 years for all 50 states to agree to grant them voting rights.

Information for this article was contributed by Susan Haigh, Suman Naishadham and Carolyn Thompson of The Associated Press.