Why is lucy stone famous

Stone waited until to enroll at the Oberlin Collegiate Institute later Oberlin College ; upon her graduation in , she became the first Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor's degree.

Stone gave her first public talk on women's rights from her brother's pulpit in Gardner, Massachusetts, in December She was then hired as an agent for the Garrisonian Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society the following year. In addition, she played a leading role in the burgeoning women's rights movement, serving as an organizer for its first national convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in In , Stone married hardware merchant, Henry Blackwell, though omitting the word "obey" from the vows.

Stone also chose to keep her own surname. During the Civil War, Stone joined other feminist-abolitionists to found the Women's National Loyal League, an organization committed to the full emancipation and enfranchisement of African Americans.

When Reconstruction began, Stone became a founder of the American Equal Rights Association AERA , a union of women's rights and abolition supporters determined to support the extension of voting rights irrespective of both race and sex. Under its advocacy, Stone made an extended tour of Kansas in , campaigning for state constitutional recognition of equal rights for both women and African Americans.

Federal congressional action, first on the Fourteenth Amendment- which provided civil rights for freed slaves while ensuring voter protection only for men- and then on the Fifteenth Amendment- which guaranteed equal rights without regard to color while pointedly neglecting the issue of sex- angered many women's rights supporters. This caused a division in the women's rights movement.

Stone ultimately resigned herself to the provision of voting rights for African-American men, without accompanying enfranchisement of white or black women. In , Stone, her husband, Mary Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and others held a convention in Cleveland, at which they founded the rival American Woman Suffrage Association AWSA , dedicated to achieving woman suffrage, especially through state-level legislation, while refusing to undermine achievements in African-American civil rights.

In , Stone and her husband relocated their household to Dorchester, Massachusetts, and raised capital for a newspaper, to be called the Woman's Journal, by selling shares in a joint stock company to Boston supporters.

There was only one college that admitted women. The 'Come-Outers' were the Garrisonian abolitionists, of whom Lucy was one. The Garrisonians were most of them unorthodox in their religious views; they severely denounded the proslavery attitude of most the clergy and churches; they encourages public speaking by women; they were generally non-resistants; they withheld their allegiance from the United States Constitution because it sanctioned slavery; and they advocated 'No union with slaveholders.

Oberlin was strongly antislavery, but its abolitionism was strictly orthodox and constitutional. Lucy wrote home a little later: 'There is not a single Liberator taken in Oberlin, nor a single Liberator man, woman or child here but me. Lucy was intending to lecture and Antoinette [Brown Blackwell] to preach. Both wished for practice in public speaking.

They asked Professor Thome, the had of that department, to let them debate. He was a man of liberal views -- a Southerner who had freed his slaves -- and he consented. Tradition says that the debate was exceptionally brilliant. More persons than usual came in to listen, attracted by curiosity.

But the Ladies' Board immediately got busy, St. Though initially taking on her husband's surname, she opted to go back to her maiden name a year after their marriage. As with any high-profile political movement, fissures emerged. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both former allies who deeply opposed Stone's support for the 15th Amendment.

While the amendment only guaranteed Black men the right to vote, Stone backed it, reasoning that it would eventually lead to the women's vote as well. Anthony and Stanton strongly disagreed; they felt that the amendment was a half-measure, and resented what they perceived as Stone's betrayal of the women's rights movement. In , however, thanks in large part to the hard work of Stone's daughter, Alice, and Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, the women's rights movement reunified through the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

While Stone did live to see the end of slavery, she died 30 years before women were finally permitted to vote August , on October 18, , in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Her ashes are held at a columbarium within Boston's Forest Hill Cemetery. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.

Susan B. Anthony was a suffragist, abolitionist, author and speaker who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth is best known for her speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early leader of the woman's rights movement, writing the Declaration of Sentiments as a call to arms for female equality.