* Oberlin college in Ohio was then the only college admitting both Blacks and women.

** The Woman’s Journal was considered at the time to be the voice of the women’s movement.

 Lucy Stone was the first woman college graduate in Massachusetts.  What she learned in Oberlin College in Ohio of Greek and Hebrew convinced her that text in the Bible relating inferior qualities to women was due to incorrect translation of the ancient tongues. Lucy was asked to write a graduation speech in 1847, but refused as at that time women were not permitted to speak in public and a man would have had to read her graduation speech.

 Upon graduation, Lucy returned to Massachusetts and began her speaking and writing career as an abolitionist and feminist in the pulpit of her brother’s church in Gardner, Massachusetts. “I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex.”

 The famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison is quoted as saying, “She is a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free as the air.”  During her freedom speeches Lucy was “pelted with prayer books and other missives.” (See Wheeler, Leslie, “Lucy Stone: Radical Beginnings” in Feminist Theories: Three Centuries of Key Women Thinkers. S. Spender, ed. NY. Pantheon Books, 1983). 

 Lucy is credited with being made lecturer for the American Anti-slavery Society, helping organize a women’s rights convention in Worcester, MA; the first national convention, and for inspiring Susan B. Anthony to join the cause.  She is also famous as the first woman to keep her maiden name after marriage to Henry Blackwell, and with him, for starting a weekly newspaper, ‘The Woman’s Journal,’ considered the voice of the women’s movement. At death, her words to her daughter Alice: “Make the world better.”

Quick history of voting rights in America:  At first only White men owning property were permitted voting rights; by the Civil War most White men, with property or not, could vote. In 1869 the 15th amendment guaranteed right to vote to Black men; in 1879 Massachusetts gave women partial vote (for school committee); with the 19th amendment in 1920, 51 years after Black men were granted voting rights, women were granted the legal right to vote in America.