Suffragette Given A Boost TV Journalist Wants Broader Recognition Extended To Susan B. Anthony

Lynn Sherr has interviewed countless people, including prominent dignitaries and notable politicians, in more than 30 years as a journalist. Yet she never has had the opportunity to meet the person she admires most.

Unfortunately, Sherr will never have a face-toface with that person, since Susan B. Anthony, matriarch of the women’s suffrage movement, has been dead for nearly a century.

“I can’t tell you what I’d give to meet her,” Sherr says in an interview. “I just want to sit at her feet, listen to her talk and learn from her.”

Of course, Sherr, 53, is no lovesick youngster. She is a celebrated personality in her own right as an award-winning correspondent for ABC News’ “20/20” and a longtime TV political commentator. With the self-assurance and forthrightness that comes from years of operating in the public eye, Sherr is emphatic when it comes to her feelings for Anthony:

“She was witty, intelligent and perceptive - so much ahead of her time. She was courageous and tenacious, dedicated and principled. Always diplomatic but very direct. She was a true American hero.”

In a way, Sherr says she feels she knows Anthony, or Susan B., as she often refers to her. She has become an authority on Anthony’s life and work through researching her new book, “Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words.”

The book was released Feb. 15 in celebration of Anthony’s 175th birthday.

The book’s release was also timed to coincide with this year’s 75th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.

In Dallas recently to promote the book, Sherr said she wants to elevate Anthony’s contributions and legacy beyond a passing mention in contemporary history books and the subject of a poorly received $1 coin issued in 1979.

“The book is intended to reclaim Susan B. Anthony’s place in our lives,” she writes in her book.

“Failure Is Impossible” follows a previous book project for Sherr.

Last year, she and co-author Jurate Kazickas released a guidebook called “Susan B. Anthony Slept Here: A Guide to American Women’s Landmarks.”

Between the two books and lectures and promotions on their behalf, Sherr has become something of a spokeswoman on the subject of Susan B. Anthony and women’s suffrage.

“Failure Is Impossible” does not follow the usual biographical structure. Instead of long paragraphs of third-person narrative, the book combines Anthony’s words and writings with Sherr’s reflections and commentary.

Sherr says her unofficial title is “Susan B. Anthony in Sound Bites.” The approach, she says, is intended to make Anthony more “accessible” to modern readers.

“As a journalist, I rely on words - specifically one’s own words - to define an individual,” she writes. “And I spend a good deal of my professional life trying to get them down accurately. So I wanted to let Anthony speak for herself, without the intrusion of biographers and revisionists, who have on occasion tended to smooth over her delightfully candid comments or disregard her very personal observations.”

Sherr, 53, developed her fascination with Anthony about 25 years ago as a young news reporter covering the new women’s movement, including the battle for equal rights.

“I started learning about women’s rights and women’s history - things I was never taught in school - and it came as a great revelation to me that we actually had foremothers,” she says.

The more she researched, the more she discovered that the rights women were demanding and the issues they were raising were hardly new.

“I learned that Anthony and her colleagues had not only gotten there first, and said it better, but they had carefully, wittily and sometimes painfully laid the groundwork for virtually every right (women) were either demanding or already took for granted,” she writes. “Inspired by my new knowledge, I hastened to spread the word.”

Sherr also quickly discovered that of all the 19th-century women’s rights reformers, the “brightest star was Susan B. Anthony.”

Anthony was born into a Quaker family in Massachusetts on Feb. 15, 1820. Her reform-minded parents instilled in her a passion for social change for the benefit of all.

As an adult, she taught school for 15 years but quit to devote full energy to abolition and the temperance movement. When her gender prohibited her from speaking at a temperance rally, she joined forces with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and shifted her attention to women’s rights.

From the outset, she recognized that the path to empowerment was the right to vote. So in 1869, Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, and she devoted the rest of her life trumpeting and lobbying for “the cause.”

Anthony, a spinster, also spoke out on other women’s issues, including domestic violence, equal pay, legal rights for married women, and sexual harassment, traveling the country to share her views and drum up support.

“She is such an inspiration for me,” Sherr says.

“I want her birthday celebrated as a national women’s holiday. I want to see her get the recognition she deserves. That is my project.”