BWHT Board Member Polly Kaufman gave the opening presentation at the August Institute. This excerpt from her remarks focuses on Lucy Stone.
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Three
extraordinary women, with strong ties to Boston who probably never met,
are about to become close associates. Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, and
Lucy Stone will share the same space on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, separate,
yet together. From now on and into the next millennium at least, the people
of Boston will associate each with the other. Even though these notable
women did not know each other, they shared many ideals and each expressed
their thoughts in writings we can still read. We will look at the ideas
they had in common. They walked the same Boston streets – two of them at
the same time – but they had different life stories, and we will look at
those differences as well.It is the differences one notices first – beginning with their births. Abigail Adams was born first – in 1744 – in Weymouth, the daughter of Elizabeth Quincy from a line of old Massachusetts families and a Congregational minister, the Rev. William Smith, a graduate of Harvard. Phillis Wheatley was only ten years younger, but she was born in Africa, enslaved and sold as a young girl to Susannah and John Wheatley, he a well-to-do merchant in Boston. Both Adams and Wheatley lived in the Revolutionary Era. Lucy Stone’s life spanned both sides of the Civil War. She was born in 1818, two months before Abigail Adams died – and more than 30 years after Phillis Wheatley died – to a large family on a subsistence farm in western Massachusetts. She was dismayed by the hard life lived by her mother, the wife of a patriarchal farmer – Lucy’s father.
Over the years, historians have interpreted each of these women from differing points of view. Their views have often come down to the question of whether they were women who simply accomodated to society or protestors who wanted to bring change.
* * *
There is no question about which column – accomodationist or protestor – Lucy Stone fits in. She resented the fact that her family showed preference to her older brother even though she could learn and run faster than he could. On the farm in West Brookfield where she was raised, her father believed that he was the ruler of his family. When she read in the Bible that men should rule women, she became determined to go to col-lege to study Greek and Hebrew so she could translate the Bible for herself because she did not trust translation by men. By supporting herself with teaching and housework, she graduated from Oberlin College in 1847 and was the first Massachusetts women to graduate from college. Although she was asked to give a commencement address, she refused when she found she could not read it herself because she was a woman (36 years later Oberlin relented). She became a public lecturer for the anti-slavery society, also speaking on women’s rights. In 1850 she led the call for the first national women’s rights convention. It was held at Worcester and her speech there converted Susan B. Anthony to the cause.
Lucy is remembered for keeping her own name upon her marriage to Henry Blackwell – calling herself Mrs. Lucy Stone and becoming the first Lucy Stoner. Like Abigail Adams and Phillis Wheatley, Lucy Stone was a writer. From 1872 until 1893, she (and her husband) edited the wonderful Woman’s Journal, the organ of the American Woman Suffrage Association. They shared offices at 5 Park Street with the N.E. Woman Suffrage Association. (I am fond of saying that the placement of their office, one half a block from the State House, the seat of political power, showed how serious their intentions were.) The Woman’s Journal is full of news about women’s accomplishments and goals, not just about the push for woman’s suffrage.
In 1869 when the 15th amendment granting suffrage to the newly freed African American men was being debated, the women suffrage movement split apart. After working unsuccessfully for the inclusion of women in the amendment, Lucy Stone and the N.E. Suffrage Association gave in to support the amendment, saying “This is the Negro’s hour.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony withdrew support of the amendment and formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. Lucy Stone and her associates in turn formed the American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston with the Woman’s Journal as its organ. Although Lucy Stone has been called a conservative because of her support of the 15th amendment, I see that action as a brave one. She was a true resister, a radical for her entire life.
* * *
And so here we are with our three new friends who will perhaps spend a millennium together. It should be clear to us by now what they had in common. Yes, they were writers: one of private letters later published, another a published poet, and another a journalist meeting weekly deadlines for twenty years. What else did they have in common? They rejected the status quo. They wanted to open up society. Each felt restrictions in her own life that she believed should be removed for the generations to come.
Let’s have Phillis Wheatley lead them in song:
“Should you, my lords, while you peruse my song,For friend Phillis, freedom was ending slavery; for friend Abigail, freedom was women having legal control over their own affairs and being educated in how to conduct them; and for friend Lucy, freedom was women having a direct voice in determining the policies and actions of the United States. Because each of them was fighting against tyranny, we will let the end of Phillis’ song bring this morning’s thoughts to a conclusion:
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung.
Whence flow these wishes for the common good
By feeling hearts alone – best understood. …
“Such, such my case
And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?”
 
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