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“CHAMPION OF HER SEX” — Nellie Bly interviews Susan B. Anthony
This is a complete transcription of the article “Champion Of Her Sex”, containing Nellie Bly’s interview with Susan B. Anthony, originally printed in The New York World, Feb. 2, 1896.
Susan B. Anthony! She was waiting for me. I stood for an instant in the doorway and looked at her. She made a picture to remember and to cherish.
She sat in a low rocking-chair, an image of repose and restfulness. Her well-shaped head, with its silken snowy hair combed smoothly over her ears, rested against the back of the chair. Her shawl had half-fallen from her shoulders and her soft black silk gown lay in gentle folds about her. Her slender hands lay folded idly in her lap, and her feet, crossed, just peeped from beneath the edge of her skirt. If she had been posed for a picture, it could not have been done more artistically or perfectly.
“Do you know the world is a blank to me,” she said after we had exchanged greetings. “I haven’t read a newspaper in ten days and I feel lost in everything. Tell me about Cube! I am so interested in it. I would postpone my own enfranchisement to see Cuba free.”
I had gone to her to talk of her own great self, not Cuba, so after I told her briefly how matters stood, I instantly followed it up with a question about herself.
“Tell me, what was the cause of your being a suffragist? How did you begin” I asked.
“My being a suffragist resulted from many other things that happened to me early in my life,” she answered, unclasping her hands and resting them on the arms of her chair. “I remember the first time I ever heard of suffragists I was bored and complained because my family were so intensely interested in the subject. ‘Can’t you find anything else to talk about?’ I asked my sisters in disgust. That was over forty years ago.”
HER FAMILY HISTORY
“Let me tell you of my family, and then you can understand it better,” she continued. “I was born in South Adams, Mass. My mother and my father were born in the same town. My father was a Quaker and my mother was a…
