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Cemetery Visitors Honor Pioneer Susan B. Anthony After Clinton Makes History

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Hillary Clinton made history this week when she became the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. Here she is on Tuesday night.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HILLARY CLINTON: On the very day my mother was born, in Chicago, Congress was passing the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: That amendment finally gave women the right to vote.

MARTIN: Mari Tsuchiya and her husband watched Clinton's speech from their home in Rochester, N.Y. The next morning they went to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, home to the grave of Susan B. Anthony. They placed flowers at her tombstone. Tsuchiya says, she was thinking about her twins and granddaughter.

MARI TSUCHIYA: They are all affected by what Susan B. has done to us that they have the right to vote and that they can even run for president in the future.

MARTIN: Susan B. Anthony, you may remember, crisscrossed the country through much of her adult life, campaigning to abolish slavery and to advance voting rights for women.

In Rochester, honoring Susan B. Anthony on Election Day has become quite a trend. Voters dot her gravestone with dozens of I voted stickers on Election Day.

BRIANNE WOJTESTA: In a way, it felt like I was giving my sticker to Susan B. Anthony.

MARTIN: That was Brianne Wojtesta, who first left a sticker on Susan B. Anthony's gravestone two years ago.

WOJTESTA: As I was approaching the grave, an older woman was walking away from it who also had the same idea. And she had put her sticker on, and mine was that second sticker.

MARTIN: Susan B. Anthony wasn't always so revered. Back in 1872, she was arrested for voting in Rochester and fined $100, a pretty penny back then. But 14 years after her death, voters passed the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. And decades later, the U.S. Treasury placed her image on the U.S. dollar coin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Michel Martin is the weekend host of All Things Considered, where she draws on her deep reporting and interviewing experience to dig in to the week's news. Outside the studio, she has also hosted "Michel Martin: Going There," an ambitious live event series in collaboration with Member Stations.