Lucy Stone, Abolitionist and Womens Rights Reformer

Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818–October 18, 1893)  was the first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree and the first woman in the United States to keep her own name after marriage. While she started out on the radical edge of womens rights at the beginning of her speaking and writing career, shes usually described as a leader of the conservative wing of the suffrage movement in her later years. The woman whose speech in 1850 converted Susan B. Anthony to the suffrage cause later disagreed  with Anthony over strategy and tactics, splitting the suffrage movement into two major branches after the Civil War. Fast Facts: Lucy Stone Known For: A major figure in the abolitionist and womens rights movements of the 1800sBorn: August 13, 1818 in West Brookfield, MassachusettsParents: Hannah Matthews and Francis StoneDied: October 18, 1893 in Boston, MassachusettsEducation: Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Oberlin CollegeAwards and Honors:  Inducted into National Womens Hall of Fame; the subject of a U.S. postal stamp; statue placed in Massachusetts State House; featured in the Boston Womens Heritage TrailSpouse(s): Henry Browne BlackwellChildren: Alice Stone BlackwellNotable Quote: I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power. Early Life Lucy Stone was born on August 13, 1818, on her familys Massachusetts farm in West Brookfield. She was the eighth of nine children, and as she grew up, she watched as her father ruled the household, and his wife, by divine right. Disturbed when her mother had to beg her father for money, she was also unhappy with the lack of support in her family for her education. She was faster at learning than her brothers, but they were to be educated while she was not. She was inspired in her reading by the Grimke sisters, who were abolitionists as well as proponents of womens rights. When the Bible was quoted to her, defending the positions of men and women, she declared that when she grew up, shed learn Greek and Hebrew so she could correct the mistranslation that she was sure was behind such verses. Education Her father would not support her education, so she alternated her own education with teaching to earn enough to continue. She attended several institutions, including Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1839. By age 25 four years later, she had saved enough to fund her first year at Oberlin College in Ohio, the countrys first college to admit both women and blacks. After four years of study at Oberlin College, all the while teaching and doing housework to pay for the costs, Lucy Stone graduated in 1847. She was asked to write a commencement speech for her class, but she refused because someone else would have had to read her speech because women were not allowed, even at Oberlin, to give a public address. Shortly after Stone, the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree, returned to her home state, she gave her first public speech. The topic was womens rights and she delivered the speech from the pulpit of her brothers Congregational Church in Gardner, Massachusetts. Thirty-six years after she graduated from Oberlin, she was an honored speaker at Oberlins 50th-anniversary celebration. The American Anti-Slavery Society A year after she graduated, Lucy Stone was hired as an organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In this paid position, she traveled and gave speeches on abolition and womens rights. William Lloyd Garrison, whose ideas were dominant in the Anti-Slavery Society, said of her during her first year of working with the organization, She is a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free as the air, and is preparing to go forth as a lecturer, particularly in vindication of the rights of women. Her course here has been very firm and independent, and she has caused no small uneasiness in the spirit of sectarianism in the institution. When her womens rights speeches created too much controversy within the Anti-Slavery Society—some wondered whether she was diminishing her efforts on behalf of the abolition cause—she arranged to separate the two ventures, speaking on weekends on abolition and weekdays on womens rights, and charging admission for the speeches on womens rights. In three years, she earned $7,000 with these talks. Radical Leadership Stones radicalism on both abolition and womens rights brought large crowds. The talks also drew hostility: according to historian Leslie Wheeler, people tore down the posters advertising her talks, burned pepper in the auditoriums where she spoke, and pelted her with prayer books and other missiles. Having been convinced by using the Greek and Hebrew she learned at Oberlin that indeed the Biblical proscriptions on women were badly translated, she challenged those rules in churches that she found to be unfair to women. Raised in the Congregational Church, she was unhappy with its refusal to recognize women as voting members of congregations as well as their condemnation of the Grimke sisters for their public speaking. Finally expelled by the Congregationalists for her views and public speaking, she joined with the Unitarians. In 1850, Stone was a leader in organizing the first national womans rights convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts. The 1848 convention in Seneca Falls had been an important and radical move, but the attendees were mostly from the local area. This was the next step. At the 1850 convention, Lucy Stones speech is credited with converting Susan B. Anthony to the cause of woman suffrage. A copy of the speech, which was sent to England, inspired John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor to publish The Enfranchisement of Women. Some years later, she also convinced Julia Ward Howe to adopt womens rights as a cause along with abolition. Frances Willard credited Stones work with her joining the suffrage cause. Marriage and Motherhood Stone had thought of herself as a free soul who would not marry; then she met Cincinnati businessman Henry Blackwell in 1853 on one of her speaking tours. Henry was seven years younger than Lucy and courted her for two years. Henry was anti-slavery and  pro-womens  rights. His eldest sister  Elizabeth Blackwell  (1821–1910), became the first woman physician in the United States, while another sister,  Emily Blackwell  (1826–1910), became a physician as well. Their brother Samuel later married  Antoinette Brown  (1825–1921), a friend of Lucy Stones at Oberlin and the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States. Two years of courtship and friendship convinced Lucy to accept Henrys offer of marriage. Lucy was especially impressed when he rescued a fugitive slave from her owners. She wrote to him, A wife should no more take her husbands name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost. Henry agreed with her. I wish, as a husband, to  renounce  all the privileges which the  law  confers upon me, which are not strictly  mutual. Surely  such a marriage  will not degrade you, dearest. And so,  in 1855, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell married. At the ceremony, Minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson read  a statement by the bride and groom, renouncing and protesting the marriage laws of the time, and announcing that she would keep her name. Higginson published the ceremony widely with their permission. The couples daughter Alice Stone Blackwell was born in 1857. A son died at birth; Lucy and Henry had no other children. Lucy retired for a short period from active touring and public speaking and devoted herself to raising her daughter. The family moved from Cincinnati to New Jersey. In a letter written to her sister-in-law Antoinette Blackwell on February 20, 1859, Stone wrote, ...for these years I can only be a mother—no trivial thing, either. The next year, Stone refused to pay property taxes on her home. She and Henry carefully kept her property in her name, giving her independent income during their marriage. In her statement to the authorities, Lucy Stone protested the taxation without representation that women still endured, since women had no vote. The authorities seized some furniture to pay the debt, but the gesture was widely publicized as symbolic on behalf of womens rights. Split in the Suffrage Movement Inactive in the suffrage movement during the Civil War, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell became active again when the war ended and the  Fourteenth Amendment  was proposed, giving the vote to black men. For the first time, the Constitution would, with this Amendment, mention male citizens explicitly. Most woman suffrage activists were outraged. Many saw the possible passage of this Amendment as setting back the cause of woman suffrage. In 1867, Stone again went on a full lecture tour to Kansas and New York, working for woman suffrage state amendments, trying to work for both black and woman suffrage. The woman suffrage movement split on this and other strategic grounds. The  National Woman Suffrage Association, led by  Susan B. Anthony  and  Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided to oppose the  Fourteenth Amendment because of the language male citizen. Lucy Stone,  Julia Ward Howe, and Henry Blackwell led those who sought to keep the causes of black and woman suffrage together, and in 1869 they and others founded the  American Woman Suffrage Association. For all her radical reputation, Lucy Stone was identified in this later period with the conservative wing of the woman suffrage movement. Other differences in strategy between the two wings included the AWSAs following a strategy of state-by-state suffrage amendments and the NWSAs support of a national constitutional amendment. The AWSA remained largely  middle  class,  while the NWSA embraced working-class issues and members. The Womens Journal The next year, Lucy raised enough funds to start a suffrage weekly newspaper,  The Womans Journal. For the first two years, it was edited by  Mary Livermore, and then Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell became the editors. Lucy Stone found working on a newspaper far more compatible with family life than the lecture circuit. But I do believe that a womans truest place is in a home, with a husband and with children, and with large freedom, pecuniary freedom, personal freedom, and the right to vote. Lucy Stone to her adult daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell Alice Stone Blackwell attended Boston University, where she was one of two women in a class with 26 men. She later got involved with  The Womans Journal,  which survived until 1917. Alice was the sole editor during its later years. The Womans Journal  under Stone and Blackwell maintained a Republican Party line, opposing, for instance, labor movement organizing and strikes and  Victoria Woodhulls  radicalism, in contrast to the Anthony-Stanton NWSA. Last Years Lucy Stones radical move to keep her own name continued to inspire and enrage. In 1879, Massachusetts gave women a limited right to vote for the school committee. In Boston, however, the registrars refused to let Lucy Stone vote unless she used her husbands name. She continued to find that, on legal documents and when registering with her husband at hotels, she had to sign as Lucy Stone, married to Henry Blackwell, for her signature to be accepted as valid. Lucy Stone did, in the 1880s, welcome Edward Bellamys American version of Utopian socialism, as did many other woman suffrage activists. Bellamys vision in the book  Looking Backward  drew a vivid picture of a society with economic and social equality for women. In 1890, Alice Stone Blackwell, now a leader in the woman suffrage movement in her own right, engineered a reunification of the two competing suffrage organizations. The National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association united to form the  National American Woman Suffrage Association, with  Elizabeth Cady Stanton  as president,  Susan B. Anthony  as vice president, and Lucy Stone as chairman of the executive committee. In an 1887 speech to the New England Womans Club, Stone said: I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.   Death Stones voice had already faded and she rarely spoke to large groups later in her life. But in 1893, she gave  lectures at the Worlds Columbian Exposition. A few months later, she died in Boston of cancer and was cremated. Her last words to her daughter were Make the world better. Legacy Lucy Stone is less well known today than  Elizabeth Cady Stanton,  Susan B. Anthony, or  Julia Ward Howe, whose Battle Hymn of the Republic helped immortalize her name. Stones daughter Alice Stone Blackwell published her mothers biography,  Lucy Stone, Pioneer of Womans Rights,  in 1930, helping to keep her name and contributions known. But Lucy Stone is still remembered today primarily as the first woman to keep her own name after marriage. Women who follow that custom are sometimes called Lucy Stoners. Sources Adler, Stephen J. and Lisa Grunwald. Womens Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present. New York: Random House, 2005.â€Å"Lucy Stone.† National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.â€Å"Lucy Stone.† National Womens History Museum.McMillen, Sally G. Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life. Oxford University Press, 2015.Wheeler, Leslie. Lucy Stone: Radical Beginnings. Spender, Dale (ed.). Feminist Theorists: Three Centuries of Key Women Thinkers. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983