Lucy Stone Lucy Stone rose to prominence during the 1920’s abolitionist and first-wave feminist movements. Strong-willed and bold in her beliefs, Stone was among the first women to receive a Bachelor’s degree in the state of Massachusetts. Along with getting a college degree she was known to use her maiden name as a married woman--an unbeknownst concept at the time. At the First National Women’s Convention, Stone delivered her career defining speech entitled, “Disappointment is the Lot of Women”, that speech would later solidify her status as the definitive orator of the reform movement period. Lucy Stone drew tremendous inspiration from her discriminatory experiences while getting her education and working as a teacher, the works of William …show more content…
Lucy Stone was born on the 13th of August in 1818 in West Brookfield, Massachusetts to a family of 9. Both her mother and father were devout abolitionists, instilling in her the belief that all people should have equal rights. Initially, her parents did not allow Stone to pursue higher education, but seeing her older brothers receive college degrees only further inspired her to strive for greatness. After graduating from a public institution she raised funds to go to college by school teaching at age 16, as her parents did not support her decision to get educated. While working as a teacher, there was an evident wage gap between Stone and her male co-workers. Female teachers earned only 1.00USD per day as starting pay while male teachers earned more than twice as much. During her time at the university, Stone crossed paths with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and associated herself with the American Anti-Slavery Society--one of many abolitionist associations she would contribute to in her lifetime. Garrison was quoted as saying, “She is a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free as the air, and is preparing
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War, American Women in the Nineteenth Century: Hill and Wang, New York 1986
Instinctively a feminist, Lucy Diggs Slowe was an outspoken advocate for the empowerment and education of the African American female. A graduate of Howard University in 1908, Ms. Slowe cultivated her passion for gender equality with many leadership positions on the Howard campus. “She was the first president of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first greek letter organization for black college women” (Perkins, 1996, p. 90). After graduation Slowe went on to teach, earned a Master’s degree from Columbia University and took classes in the innovative field of Student Personnel that would eventually be her career until her death in 1937. The first African American Dean of Women at Howard University, she clashed with many of the presidents at Howard during her fifteen year tenure. As a result of her push back on the paternalistic rules imposed on the female students at Howard, Ms. Slowe’s department was dismantled and she was asked to live on campus to oversee the female population that resided on campus. Despite this retaliation from the University President, Mordecai
“I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.” (www.doonething.org). Lucy Stone was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts on August 13, 1818. Her parents, Francis Stone and Hannah Matthews, were abolitionists and Congregationalists. Stone retained their anti-slavery opinions but rejected the Congregationalist Church after it criticized abolitionists. Along with her anti-slavery attitude, Lucy Stone also pursued a higher education. She completed local schools at the age of sixteen and saved money until she could attend a term at Mount Holyoke Seminary five years later. In 1843, Stone enrolled at the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College). With her graduation in 1847, she became the first Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor’s degree. However, Lucy Stone was not done expressing her abolitionist and feminist beliefs to the public (anb.org).
In the 1840’s, most of American women were beginning to become agitated by the morals and values that were expected of womanhood. “Historians have named this the ’Cult of True Womanhood’: that is, the idea that the only ‘true’ woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family” (History.com). Voting was only the right of men, but women were on the brink to let their voices be heard. Women pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott wrote eleven resolutions in The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments; this historical document demanded abolishment of any laws that authorized unequal treatment of women and to allow for passage of a suffrage amendment.
Up until and during the mid -1800’s, women were stereotyped and not given the same rights that men had. Women were not allowed to vote, speak publically, stand for office and had no influence in public affairs. They received poorer education than men did and there was not one church, except for the Quakers, that allowed women to have a say in church affairs. Women also did not have any legal rights and were not permitted to own property. Overall, people believed that a woman only belonged in the home and that the only rule she may ever obtain was over her children. However, during the pre- Civil war era, woman began to stand up for what they believed in and to change the way that people viewed society (Lerner, 1971). Two of the most famous pioneers in the women’s rights movement, as well as abolition, were two sisters from South Carolina: Sarah and Angelina Grimké.
On November 24, 1974, an American Anthropologist by the name of Donald Johanson and his research team, made a ground-breaking discovery that caused a mass dispute in human evolution. Dr. Johanson documented in his book, Lucy The Beginning Of Mankind, the discoveries he and his team have come across. Dr. Johanson and his team discovered a skeleton of a hominid, dated between 3.9 to 3 million years old (164). The hominid, which they referred to as Lucy, was discovered while surveying Hadar, in the Dafar region of Ethiopia (164-166). Lucy’s discovery, a 41% complete human ancestor caused a controversial alteration in the human origins. Lucy was the oldest human ancestor. During the following year, Johanson’s team discovered fossilized remains
After many years of battling for equality among the sexes, people today have no idea of the trails that women went through so that women of future generations could have the same privileges and treatment as men. Several generations have come since the women’s rights movement and the women of these generations have different opportunities in family life, religion, government, employment, and education that women fought for. The Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people that questioned why human lives, especially those of women, were unfairly confined. Many women, like Sojourner Truth and Fanny Fern, worked consciously to create a better world by bringing awareness to these inequalities. Sojourner Truth, prominent slave and advocate
Another issue that presented her with difficulties in her teaching job was that of slavery and abolitionism. She had been raised a block away from Harriet Beecher Stowe and had heard stories from Harriet Tubman...
Perhaps the most crucial reformists of the time period were those battling to obtain their God-given rights. Many lower class workers, such as African Americans, women, and immigrants, sought after the opportunity to vote, work it certain facilities, and be accepted in society as a whole. An engraving by Patrick Reason depicts an African American female in chains; with the inscription ‘Am I not a Woman and a Sister?’(Doc C) The woman shown is crying out, begging to be heard and listened to. Many males of the time period did not take female reformists seriously, or listen to them at all. On August 2nd, 1848, through the Seneca Falls Declaration, Elizabeth Cady Stanton prote...
Anna Julia Haywood was born into slavery to Hannah Stanley Haywood and her master, George Washington Haywood, in 1858.1 At the age of nine, she enrolled in St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute for free Blacks. Cooper married St. Augustine graduate George Cooper, in 1877. His death in 1879 "ironically allowed her to pursue a ca reer as a teacher, whereas no married woman—black or white—could continue to teach."2 Cooper received a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from Oberlin College, and was first recruited to teach in 1887. She taught at M Street High School, Washingto n's only black high school, for many years, and was the subject of public controversy because of her educational philosophy.
women born in slavery and became active in lectures and public speaking. They made a
Jeffrey, Julie Roy. The great silent army of abolitionism: ordinary women in the antislavery movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
MacLean, Nancy. A. The American Women's Movement, 1945-2000. A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, a.k.a.
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a newspaper editor and journalist who went on to lead the American anti-lynching crusade. Working closely with both African-American community leaders and American suffragists, Wells worked to raise gender issues within the "Race Question" and race issues within the "Woman Question." Wells was born the daughter of slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. During Reconstruction, she was educated at a Missouri Freedman's School, Rust University, and began teaching school at the age of fourteen. In 1884, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she continued to teach while attending Fisk University during summer sessions. In Tennessee, especially, she was appalled at the poor treatment she and other African-Americans received. After she was forcibly removed from her seat for refusing to move to a "colored car" on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected her suit against the railroad for violating her civil rights in 1877. This event and the legal struggle that followed it, however, encouraged Wells to continue to oppose racial injustice toward African-Americans. She took up journalism in addition to school teaching, and in 1891, after she had written several newspaper articles critical of the educational opportunities afforded African-American students, her teaching contract was not renewed. Effectively barred from teaching, she invested her savings in a part-inte...
Schneider, Dorothy. American Women in the Progressive Era 1900-1920. New York: Facts on File, 1993.