In January of this year, I was lucky enough to visit women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony's grave at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, just miles away from the home where she penned countless documents campaigning for my right to vote, among many other rights I would have been denied in her day. And while there is no true way to thank Anthony for all she has done for women, the iconic image of voters sticking their "I Voted" stickers on Susan B. Anthony's grave during the 2016 election is a fitting testament to her legacy, and the amazing strides we have made as a nation since.
While voters often put stickers on Anthony's grave, they bear a much more important significance this year; this year will be the first year that citizens will be able to cast their vote for a female president of a major political party, and quite possibly (the universe willing) the first election that the nation will elect a woman into the Oval Office. Voters already reacted in kind by leaving their stickers on Anthony's grave during the primaries, but in the days leading up to the Nov. 8 election, the grave is being visited by more well-wishers than ever.
Here was Anthony's grave during the New York primaries in April:
And here it is in the days before the election:
Sadly, Anthony did not live to see women granted the right to vote; although she worked tirelessly for the cause of women's suffrage up until her last year of life, she died in 1806 at the age of 96, a full 14 years before the ratification of the 19th amendment. Still, I imagine that the woman who was once famously arrested in the parlor of her Rochester home for daring to vote in the 1872 presidential election would love nothing more than to know that all the ~nasty women~ voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are flocking to her grave in her honor.
Susan B. Anthony imagined a world with a female president long before the rest of the world was ready to; here's hoping as this election season draws to a close that as voters we are able to honor all that she other amazing women throughout history did to make that happen.
Images: Emma Lord/Bustle
