Katie Ragon
WGS 222
Prof. Potuchek
2.13.12
Biography: Lucy Stone
Born the eighth daughter of a West Brookfield, Massachusetts farming couple in 1818,
Lucy Stone would grow up to be one of the foremost women’s rights and abolition activists of the
19 th
century. Kerr (1992:1) even calls her one of that century’s “three great woman suffragists” along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Stone’s career as a powerful women’s rights and abolitionist orator began in 1847 when she graduated from Oberlin College, the first woman from Massachusetts to do so (Lasser 2000). Shortly after, Stone was hired as a public speaker for the Garrisonian Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and used this opportunity to speak not only on behalf of the abolition movement but also in support of the young movement for women’s rights (Ibid.). Kerr (1992:2) in fact notes that she was the first woman to speak fulltime on behalf of the women’s rights movement.
After a number of years as a professional orator and organizer for women’s rights and abolitionist events, in 1855 Stone was married to Henry B. Blackwell who was also a strong women’s rights activist and who encouraged Stone’s civil and financial independence by supporting her decision to keep her maiden name after they were married (Stone was the first woman in American history to do this) and by declaring that he would “’renounce all of the privileges which the law confers on me, which are not strictly mutual,’ …grant Stone full control over her own body, and … allow her to live wherever she wished” (Viles 2000). Her marriage and the birth of her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, in 1857 caused Stone to put her public activist life on the back burner for several years, but she still found time to practice a little civil disobedience when in 1858 she refused to pay taxes to a government in which she could not participate (Lasser 2000).
In comparison with the other “great woman suffragists” of the day, Stone is notable for her unwavering commitment to both women’s rights and abolition. It is on this point in fact that

she disagreed most strongly with Stanton and Anthony and which fueled their mutual animosity
(Ibid.). This dual commitment can be seen in the organizations she helped found or was deeply involved in, the first of which was the Woman’s National Loyal League which was “formed to urge the immediate emancipation of all slaves and to support the government in its war for freedom” in 1863, the height of the American Civil War (Kerr 1992:115). In 1866, Stone was involved in the foundation of the American Equal Rights Association, an organization that merged Stone’s activist passions and fought for the right to vote for all people, regardless of race or sex (Kerr 1992:121; Lasser 2000). With the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869 suffrage was granted to black men and a schism formed in the women’s movement. The disagreement between Stone and the Stanton-Anthony duo came to a head with each side forming their own separate women’s rights organizations. While Stanton and Anthony formed the
National Woman Suffrage Society, dedicated solely to legislative and political action which would further the cause of women, Stone helped found the American Woman Suffrage
Association which supported both female and African American rights to the vote (Kerr
1992:140, 141). Around this same time, Stone and her husband started the Woman’s Journal , a newspaper which was dedicated to “the interests of Woman, to her educational, industrial, legal and political Equality” (Kerr 1992:149; Lasser 2000). Despite her animosity towards Stanton and
Anthony, in 1890 Stone lived to see the merger of each of their respective pet organizations into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (Lasser 2000).
In 1893, Stone was diagnosed with stomach cancer and after a rigorous few weeks of speaking engagements in May, she retired to spend her remaining days with family and friends.
On October 18 th
, 1863 she passed away in the presence of both her husband and her daughter
(Kerr 1992:245).