Women You May Not Know

As a child, Lucy Stone (1818-1893) witnessed her father wield control over her mother and dependent aunt, and vowed “to call no man master.”

In 1841, Stone entered Oberlin College expecting racial and gender equality; instead, she spent years challenging its sexist policies. Stone finally became the first woman to graduate from college in Massachusetts in 1847.

A singularly compelling orator, she petitioned and recruited for numerous anti-slavery societies instrumental in passing the Thirteenth Amendment. In 1850, she initiated the first National Woman’s Rights Convention.

Although Stone clashed with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton over whether to pursue women’s and Blacks’ rights separately, the women would become known as the “triumvirate” of feminism.

In 1855, Stone married abolitionist Henry Blackwell, but kept her maiden name.

In 1856 and 1858, she appeared in court for conscientious tax evasion, and in defense of fugitive slave Margaret Garner, who famously killed her own daughter rather than see her enslaved.

By 1890, Stone persuaded moderate suffragists to rejoin their progressive sisters in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Her 1893 funeral was attended by thousands.

By Jen Hawkins