Lucy Stone
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Lucy Stone was an American orator, abolitionist and suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer of promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery. Stone was known for using her birth name after marriage, contrary to the custom of women taking their husband's surname.
Daguerreotype of Lucy Stone, c. 1840–1860
Lucy Stone as a young woman
Fanciful 1919 drawing by Marguerite Martyn of Lucy Stone as a young woman being pelted with vegetables as she speaks. At right, jeering men spray her with a hose, and another man displays a book titled St. Paul Sayeth.
An engraving of Lucy Stone wearing bloomers was published in 1853.
National Women's Rights Convention
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The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Convention combined both female and male leadership and attracted a wide base of support including temperance advocates and abolitionists. Speeches were given on the subjects of equal wages, expanded education and career opportunities, women's property rights, marriage reform, and temperance. Chief among the concerns discussed at the convention was the passage of laws that would give women the right to vote.
Frederick Douglass was strongly in favor of women's right to vote.
Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis helped organize and presided over the first two conventions, and was president of the Central Committee for most of the decade.
Lucy Stone helped organize the first eight national conventions, presided over the seventh and was secretary of the Central Committee for most of the decade.
Wendell Phillips spoke powerfully at many conventions, and was in charge of the finances.