If you have any doubt your right to vote is important, don't forget one of New York's most famous voting rights and labor activists, Susan B. Anthony.

Going to the polls is a hard-fought right won by Anthony and other suffragists, who spent the better part of their lives trying to win voting rights for women in the United States.

"Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry," said Anthony, who was born in Massachusetts but spent most of her life in New York.

Anthony's work on behalf of women began in New York as a teacher in New Rochelle and Canajoharie in the mid-1800s, when she learned male teachers made several times the salary of female teachers.

A member of the New York State Teachers Association (a NYSUT predecessor), Anthony called for better pay for female teachers and a role in the union's annual convention and committees.

Anthony knew that in order for women to influence public policy, they needed the right to vote. For decades she worked side by side with women's rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton, vigorously making the case that all citizens - including women - deserved the right to vote.

In 1872, Anthony and 15 other women in Rochester defiantly registered and cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election. Of the 16 women, only Anthony, the leader, was put on trial. The judge fined her $100 but did not imprison her when she refused to pay, therefore denying her the chance to appeal. Though she lost, the trial was a turning point in the struggle for women's suffrage.

Until her death at the age of 86 in 1906, Anthony continued to keep the issue alive by touring nearly every state and giving public speeches wherever she went.

In 1920, the 19th Amendment, often referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was passed, giving all women the legal right to vote.

- Sylvia Saunders