by Nicole F.
For this month, I wanted to feature a woman from history who fought for women’s rights. All too often, this women are swept under the rug in our history classes, but they deserve to be honored and recognized for their contribution for all women, so this month I decided to write about a woman named Lucy Stone.
Lucy Stone was born on August 13th 1818 in Massachusetts, she was raised in a family with nine other siblings and her two parents. Her parents were very against slavery and taught Lucy from a young age, the virtues of being a part of the fight to end slavery. This led to Lucy growing up to be a very smart and driven young woman, who wasn’t afraid to go for what she wanted. Against, her parents wishes, she applied for college after watching her older brothers attend. She applied for Oberlin in Ohio, but was denied a degree in public speaking because she was a woman. Undeterred, Lucy continued to pursue schooling and paid her way until she became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn her Bachelor’s degree, I also just want to note that she even graduated with honors.
Once graduated from school, Stone threw herself into working to abolish slavery, this launched her career as a public speaker. Though she was heckled by her opponents and was even excommunicated from her family’s church, she continued her work to end slavery and for women to have more rights. Nothing seemed to derail this woman’s passion for human rights.
Lucy Stone accomplished many things in her time. In 1850, she convened the first national Woman's Rights Convention, something that is considered to be a significant moment for American women. Her speech was so impactful that it was reprinted in newspapers nationwide. She continued to hold the annual convention and would even travel around the country to lecture about women’s rights. Then in 1868 she co-founded the State Woman’s Suffrage Association of New Jersey and later even became the president of the association. She even helped to launch a New England chapter of the Association. She even helped found the American Equal Rights Association.
As for her personal life, in 1855 she married Henry Blackwell, a man who spent two years trying to get her to agree to marry him. While she originally took his family name, she opted to go back to her maiden name stating in a letter to her husband, “a wife should no more take her husband’s name than he should hers, my name is my identity and must not be lost,” something very bold for the time. The two later had a daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, who would go on to carry her mother’s mantel of fighting for women’s right to vote.
Lucy was different from some of the other famous women's rights activists. She famously clashed with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton over the 15th Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote. Anthony and Stanton were against the amendment, seeing Lucy’s support of it as a betrayal of the women’s rights movement. But Lucy firmly believed that it would eventually lead to women having the right to vote.
Unfortunately, while she lived to see the end of slavery, she died 30 years before she could see women have the right to vote, but it’s thanks to her achievements that the movement gained the ground that it did. Her daughter Alice carried on Lucy’s legacy and worked with Elizabeth Stanton’s daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Because of all of this it is very fair to say that Lucy Stone had a major impact on women’s fight to be able to vote.
Reading and learning about Lucy Stone has been a very valuable experience, made even more so by how little I had heard about her before. She was such a strong woman who was very a head of her time and yet in schools we never really hear about her contribution. Women like Lucy should never be forgotten, she was an inspiration and a true activist. She fought for what she believed in and while she wasn’t able to see the results, her legacy lives on.
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