Susan B. Anthony

After an hour of debate on November 1, 1872, in a barber shop in Rochester, New York, Susan B. Anthony bullied three young male election officials into registering her and three other women to vote in a federal election fourteen years before it was legal. She unnerved them by threatening to sue them each personally for great sums of money if she was denied her rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Four days later, Anthony and a small group of other duly registered women voters did, in fact -- illegally -- vote.

Facing arrest later in the week for breaking the law by voting, Anthony refused to go downtown to the prosecutor’s office, as requested, where it could be done quietly, and instead insisted on being arrested at her home, hand-cuffed, and taken downtown to jail “just like a man.” After a trial during which she boldly harangued the Judge until he gave up trying to get a word in edgewise, he sentenced her to a hundred dollar fine, which she flatly told him she would never pay -- and didn’t.