President Trump announced Tuesday morning he will give a posthumous pardon to Susan B. Anthony, one of history’s biggest figures in the women’s suffrage movement.
The announcement came 100 years to the day after the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
Anthony, a strong anti-slavery pioneer who died in 1906, had been arrested in 1872 for violating laws that had permitted only men to vote in the presidential election.
She was then indicted, tried and convicted for voting illegally and sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and court costs, FOX reported.
The historic New Yorker described her two-day trial in June 1873 as “the greatest judicial outrage history has ever recorded,” according to The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Susan B. Anthony is now honored in the Capitol Rotunda as part of the women’s suffrage monument. Called the “Portrait Monument,” it depicts three women who fought to secure the vote for women, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony.
On Monday, President Trump told reporters that he would pardon someone “very, very important,” but refused to go into details.
“She was never pardoned. Did you know that? She was never pardoned,” President Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “What took so long?”
“She was guilty for voting,” he said, “and we’re going to be signing a full and complete pardon.”
Among the women in Blue Room for Trump’s 19th amendment event are Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List; Small Business’ Admin’s Jovita Carranza and Kay Cole James, president of the Heritage Foundation. pic.twitter.com/IyojWqRMib
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 18, 2020
Majorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, and conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell were in attendance.
