Lucy Stone (1818 1893) By: Meghan Monokian Well I, Lucy Stone am mostly known for being one of the most famous leaders for women’s rights in the United States. I came to be known as one of the most outspoken women of my time. I had firm beliefs against slavery and rejected the Biblical stand that men should rule over women. I was determined to make the world a better place for women. I was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts on August 13, 1818. While still a young girl, I began to notice the restrictions placed on the female gender.
I took on various home chores in order to help my mother. At sixteen I began teaching for low pay, which once again was an irritation. I worked and saved for nine years to get enough money to attend college. I would study at 2:00 in the morning before going to work to earn and save enough money for college. In order to help myself out, I attended Quaboag Seminary in Warren, Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, a Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley. I learned Hebrew and Greek in order to determine if the passages in the Bible that seemed to give man a higher order in life than women were properly translated.
I graduated from Oberlin College in 1847 becoming the first women to earn a college degree. I was asked to write an essay to read at the graduation. The college was not going to allow me to read her own essay because she was a woman. She refused to write the essay because she was insulted. For a while the college was thinking about taking away her degree because of not writing the essay but they did not. After college I became a lecturer for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-slavery Society. I firmly believed in the evils of slavery and discrimination against women.
The Essay on Women in Politics 2
Abigail Adams was the wife of one president and wife of another. She was not just a mother and a wife, she was also very concerned with politics. Abigail often corresponded with her husband through letters, as they were often separated. The most famous of these letters was entitled Remember the Ladies. In this letter, Abigail advocated women's rights to her husband. She urged him to push the ...
In 1850, I led a call for a national convention on women’s rights. I continued on lecture tours for several years. In 1855, I married an abolitionist who worked at stopping slavery named Henry Blackwell. I insisted on keeping my maiden name and I wrote out one of the first “marriage contracts” leaving out the word “obey”. I had one daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell. In 1866 I helped found the American Equal Rights Association. In 1867 I was elected president of the New Jersey Woman suffrage Association.
After organizing the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1868. I moved from Orange, New Jersey, to Boston. In 1869 there was a major division in the women who were working for female’s rights. Other conservative reformers and I formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. While serving on that association’s executive board, I raised money to start the Woman’s Journal in 1870. In 1872, my husband and I became the editors. The journal became famous over the years as the journalistic voice of the suffrage movement.
I was one of the first women to speak out against women not having the right to vote in the United States. I never knew that women won the right to vote. I died in 1893 in Massachusetts after what I considered was a successful life speaking out for women’s rights. I set goals and I tried and did accomplish most of my goals/dreams!
