Women's Rights
Throughout Lucy Stone's long career fighting for universal suffrage and women's rights, it is evident that she was always willing to stand up for what she believed, even if she was in the minority.
After graduating from Oberlin and returning to Massachusetts, Stone “delivered her first public address...on women's rights”1 at her brother, Reverend William Bowman Stone's, church. She was then hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to do a lecture tour convincing people across the country to support abolition. When she was in Boston to give a lecture, she stopped to see the sculpture The Greek Slave by Hiram Bingham. Seeing this statue moved her to tears as she thought about “the millions of women who must be freed,"2 and spent part of her speech that night “pouring [her] heart out about it."3 When her boss, Samuel May told her later that night that she needed to focus her lectures on abolition, not women’s rights, Stone told him “I was a woman before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for women.”4 So, Lucy Stone negotiated a new contract with her employers, and began touring all over the United States, speaking about women's rights five days a week. The time that she was willing to devote to speaking on women's rights shows just how passionate she was about it.
Although Lucy Stone was not at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, she and a few others hosted the "first National Women's Rights Convention"5 in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts. They sent invitations to many friends in different cities and posted advertisements in newspapers across the country. "Over a thousand people... including... representatives from eleven states,"6 attended the convention, and it became an annual occurence. Through these conventions, Stone met Susan B. Anthony, and both gave speeches supporting women's rights. Although Stone and Anthony disagreed about several things, for that period of time, they were united in their support of the women's rights movement.
In 1849, Stone adopted the Bloomer style of dress, named for Amelia Bloomer.7 This style was worn by many women's rights activists because it allowed women to have more freedom of movement in their daily lives. However, going against societal clothing norms led to several issues, and a few years later, many women stopped dressing in the Bloomer style, because they believed that their message of women's rights was not taken as seriously because of the way they were dressed. Stone, never letting ridicule bother her, wrote that "audiences listen and assent just as well to one who speaks truth in a short as in a long dress."8 Stone continued to dress in both the Bloomer style and traditional long dresses, even after it fell out of fashion. She wore the Bloomer outfits until Elzabeth Cady Stanton, a prominent leader of the women's suffrage movement, and close collaborator of Anthony's, told her to "what is physical freedom compared with mental bondage? By all means, have the new dress made long. In haste."9
In 1855, at a women's rights convention in Ohio, Stone remained committed to the cause of women's rights, even after being heckled by an onlooker. She said to him "It shall be the business of my life to deepen... disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer."10 In this speech and others similar to it, Stone used her rhetorical skills to draw people to the cause of women's rights. In fact, by the mid-1850s, she had become the leader of the movement, and had considerable influence within the community.
After the Civil War, Stone, along with Stanton, Anthony, and Frederick Douglass, founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866. At the beginning, the AERA was devoted to "protest...distinctions in rights and citizenship, on account of color or sex."11 However, issues arose within regarding the proposed 14th amendment, which was written to give men over the age of 21 the right to vote. This was first Constitutional amendment to introduce the word "male" into the Constitution, and the 15th amendment reaffirmed that all men, regardless of race, have the right to vote. Stanton and Anthony believed that white women should be given the vote within the amendment as well.
In 1867, Anthony and Stanton collaborated with George Train, an "unstable, racist"12 to support their lecturing to get a suffrage amendment passed in Kanses. Stanton and Anthony promoted his racist ideas in both the newspaper and in their speeches, saying that white women should get the vote before Black men and foreigners. This hurt the campaign, as it alienated several groups and undid all the work the Stone had been doing in Kansas to get the amendment passed. Stone confronted Anthony and Stanton about promoting racist ideas, and said that progress towards universal suffrage was the most important thing for the AERA to focus on, believing that "the 15th amendment was a positive move toward women's suffrage."13 Because of this ongoing comflict, Stanton and Anthony secretly created their own association, called the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), the chose to focus on getting the vote for white women.
Stone was unwilling to compromise her beliefs by aligning herself with the NWSA, so she established the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) with her husband, Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe in Massachusetts. The AWSA was focused on promoting universal suffrage in the United States. As a part of running the AWSA, Stone and Blackwell began publishing The Women's Journal in 1870. The Women's Journal was an incredibly successful publication, and became the definitive voice of the suffrage movement. Stone, again proving her willingness to fight for what she believed in, borrowed money from friends and investors to keep it afloat.
Also in 1870, Theodore Tilton, a reporter who used to work for the AERA, attempted to set up a meeting between the AWSA and NWSA to make them recombine. Stone had no intention to join with the NWSA, but decided to attend so she could "save our good old Equal rights [society] from being smirched, by an Alliance with the [NWSA]."14 Stone believed that joining with NWSA would force herself and other abolitionists to abandon their mission of achieving the right to vote for all people. This letter is a definitive example of how Stone held to her belief that abolition and suffrage went hand-in-hand.
In 1876, Stone was approached by Stanton and Anthony to contribute to the book they were writing about the history of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Lucy wrote back to them saying that she did not want to participate, since she had a feeling Anthony and Stanton would write a history that emphasized their own involvement and the work of the NWSA, and downplay all the work that Lucy and the other members of the AWSA did. She said to Stanton that she would "regret that any 'wing' of suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other."15 The book that was published said next to nothing about Lucy's work and the AWSA, and avoided mentioning any negative press Stanton and Anthony recieved throughout their careers. Therefore, although Stone was willing to stick to her principles and fight for what she believed in, her ideological differences with other leaders ultimately caused her removal from the history of the women's movement.
by Emily Schley
Works Cited
1 Hays, Elinor Rice. Lucy Stone: One of America’s first and greatest feminists. New York, NY: Tower Publications, 1961. p.82
2 Stone, Lucy. “The International Council, Pioneer’s Day.” The Woman’s Journal. April 14, 1888. p.3
3 Stone. The International Council, Pioneer's Day. p. 3.
4 Stone. The International Council, Pioneer's Day. p.3
5 McMillen, Sally G. Lucy Stone: An unapologetic life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015. p.90
6 Hays, Elinor Rice. Lucy Stone: One of America’s first and greatest feminists. New York, NY: Tower Publications, 1961. p.102
7 Norwood, Arlisha R. “Biography: Amelia Bloomer.” National Women’s History Museum, 2017. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/amelia-bloomer.
8 Anthony, Susan Brownell. Life and work of Susan B. Anthony: Including public addresses, her own letters and many from her contemporaries during fifty years. Edited by Ida Husted Harper, 1898. p.30
9 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Letter to Lucy Stone. Seneca Falls, New York, February 23, 1854. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss41210.mss41210-001_00066_00162/?sp=89&r=-0.034,0.772,1.139,0.616,0
10Stone, Lucy. “Disappoitment is the Lot of Women.” National Women’s Rights Convention. Speech presented at the National Women’s Rights Convention, October 17, 1855.
11 Mott, Lucretia, Theodore Tilton, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. “Memorial of American Equal Rights Association to the Congress of the United States.” National Archives and Records Administration, 1867. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7452160.
12Hays, Elinor Rice. Lucy Stone: One of America’s first and greatest feminists. New York, NY: Tower Publications, 1961. p.170
13Hays, Elinor Rice. Lucy Stone: One of America’s first and greatest feminists. New York, NY: Tower Publications, 1961. p.178
14 Stone, Lucy. Letter to Antionette Brown Blackwell. “Document 1: Lucy Stone to Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 22 March 1870.” Oberlin.Edu, 2012. https://www2.oberlin.edu/archive/teaching/projects/hist213/stone/document1.html.
15Stone, Lucy. Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1876. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss12880.mss12880-067_0439_0451/?sp=5&st=image&r=-0.126,0,1.252,1.252,0
