The 15th amendment granted the right to vote to all citizens. It did not specifically mention women, and they were largely denied that right. Hundreds of local associations and women’s groups sprouted across the country to call for extending to women the right to vote, but their efforts were reflective of their size, small and too often ineffective. Their union and growing voice came through the work of two pioneering women: Susan B. Anthony, the well-known abolitionist, and Elizabeth Candy Stanton.

On this day, May 15, in 1869, Anthony and Stanton found the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. Thy split off from the American Equal Rights Organization, after members of that group chose to focus on gaining equal rights for African-Americans.

Stanton and Anthony headed up their organization for over two decades. As a fellow suffragist described them in a contemporary account, “the two women worked marvelously together, for Mrs. Stanton was a master of words and could write and speak to perfection of the things Susan B. Anthony saw and felt but could not herself express.”