It’s the Anniversary of Susan B. Anthony’s “Illegal” Vote
Along with 13 other women, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for voting in the 1872 election; she didn’t pay. The most famous part of the speech that followed this incident in 1873 is this, I think: “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.” But I love the part where she claps back the hardest (ETA, her accepted oligarchies very much aside):
To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household — which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.