Over the last 100 years, Susan B. Anthony has become one of the most venerated women in American history, even though she was one of the most detested women in America during her lifetime.

In 1873, United States v. Susan B. Anthony became a notorious criminal trial in the federal courts.

Why?

Because in the federal election held November 1872, Ms. Anthony registered to vote—and then actually voted.

That was her crime.

Susan B. Anthony—a woman—had voted!

In New York State.

In the United States of America.

The government promptly charged her with the crime of voting without the legal right to vote in said election district “being then and there a person of the female sex.”

She was then convicted in Federal Court for violating state law about who was eligible to vote in one of the late 19th century’s most famous political court cases.

Today, of course, every American is taught about their nation’s most famous suffragist, who tirelessly advocated for women to be granted the right to vote.

PHILIP DOSSICK is the New York Times critically acclaimed writer and director of the motion picture The P.O.W.

He has written for television, including the outstanding drama, Transplant, produced by David Susskind for CBS.

His most recent books include Aztecs: Epoch Of Social Revolution, Sex And Dreams, Mark Twain In Seattle, The Naked Citizen: Notes On Privacy In The Twenty-First Century, Raymond Chowder And Bob Skloot Must Die, The Deposition, Vincent Van Gogh: Madness And Magic, Oscar Wilde: Sodomy and Heresy, Abraham Lincoln: 5 Speeches that Changed America, Lenny Bruce: The Myth of Free Speech, Times That try Men's Souls: Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Paine on Slavery and Civil Disobedience, Master and Protege: Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Ghost Dance Prophets: Wovoka, Lincoln, and Franz Boas, Voces de Libertad, and Arrested! United States vs Susan B. Anthony Regarding a Woman's Right to Vote.