Nearly a century ago, back in 1920 women voted for the first time ever in a Presidential Election and it took an additional century's-worth of fighting beforehand to bring that dream (and right) to fruition, and one woman from Rochester made that possible.

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In the election of 1872, Susan B. Anthony decided she'd had enough and was just going to go ahead and vote for former Civil War General, Ulysses S. Grant anyway. That act on November 5th 140 years ago got her arrested by a U.S. Deputy Mashall. Seven months later the was tried and convicted even despite her eloquent remarks quoting the Fourteenth Amendment. She escaped imprisonment if she paid a fine of $100 (around $3, 300 today!!) and even though she refused to pay it for the rest of her life, the government never hunted her down for it.

Can you believe that? She actually got arrested AND convicted on our own soil for voting in the election!! Thank God through her efforts and those of others, a century-and-a-half later this kind of thing is unheard of and rightly so. So if you are a woman voting in the election, you know who you have to thank, well in case you snoozed through history class anyway!

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Not only did she get her name in history but she was forever immortalized on the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin (I think I still have one or two of these) that isn't in circulation anymore but only because it was too easily confused for a quarter. How many of us can say our contributions to society have done as much as hers? Even though I'm a guy I am forever thankful to her and other activists like her friend Frederick Douglass who among many others are directly responsible for the diversity and uniqueness of our nation. Keep this in mind as you vote today.

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