page_title: Lucy Stone
section_title: Woman's rights orator
hierarchical_section_title: Lucy Stone / Woman's rights orator
caption_attribution_description: English: Fanciful drawing by Marguerite Martyn of Lucy Stone as a young lecturer being pelted with vegetables and other debris. Men train a water hose on her from the right, and a bearded man holds a book with the title "St. Paul Sayeth" on the cover.
context_page_description: Lucy Stone was a prominent U.S. orator, abolitionist, and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer 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 at a time when women were discouraged and prevented from public speaking. Stone was known for using her birth name after marriage, the custom being for women to take their husband's surname.
  Stone's organizational activities for the cause of women's rights yielded tangible gains in the difficult political environment of the 19th century. Stone helped initiate the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts and she supported and sustained it annually, along with a number of other local, state and regional activist conventions. Stone spoke in front of a number of legislative bodies to promote laws giving more rights to women.
context_section_description: In May 1851, while in Boston attending the New England Anti-Slavery Society's annual meeting, Stone went to the exhibit of Hiram Powers's statue The Greek Slave. She was so moved by the sculpture that when she addressed the meeting that evening, she poured out her heart about the statue being emblematic of all enchained womanhood. Stone said the society's general agent, Samuel May, Jr., reproached her for speaking on women's rights at an antislavery meeting, and she replied, "I was a woman before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for women." Three months later, Stone notified May that she intended to lecture on women's rights full-time and would not be available for antislavery work.  
  Stone launched her career as an independent women's rights lecturer on October 1, 1851. When May continued to press antislavery work upon her, she agreed to lecture for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on Sundays. Arranging women's rights lectures around these engagements, she used pay for her antislavery work to defray expenses of her independent lecturing until she felt confident enough to charge admission.
caption: Fanciful 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.
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