U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony, who was convicted of voting illegally in 1872.
Speaking Tuesday at a White House event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave U.S. women the right to vote, Trump said he would sign a “full and complete pardon” for Anthony.
Anthony was a leading activist in the U.S. suffrage movement. She voted for the first time in 1872 in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and was arrested, tried and convicted that year for the illegal vote. Anthony never paid the $100 fine, the equivalent of over $2,000 today.
“She was never pardoned, did you know that?” Trump asked female leaders standing behind him. “She was never pardoned. What took so long?”
He noted that Anthony helped get pardons for other women protesting their disenfranchisement, but never advocated for herself.
Six years after her conviction, Anthony, along with suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton, worked to introduce an amendment to Congress giving women the right to vote. When the 19th Amendment was ratified Aug. 18, 1920, it was popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.
Trump’s pardon came a day after he announced he would pardon someone “very, very important,” clarifying that it would not be whistleblower Edward Snowden, nor his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
