page_title: Lucy Stone
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Lucy Stone / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Post Office Department postage stamp of Lucy Stone issued in 1968
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: Lucy Stone's refusal to take her husband's name, as an assertion of her own rights, was controversial then, and is largely what she is remembered for today. Women who continue to use their father's surname after marriage are still occasionally known as "Lucy Stoners" in the United States. In 1921, the Lucy Stone League was founded in New York City by Ruth Hale, described in 1924 by Time as the "'Lucy Stone'-spouse" of Heywood Broun. The League was re-instituted in 1997.
  Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper began in 1876 to write the History of Woman Suffrage. They planned for one volume but finished four before the death of Anthony in 1906, and two more afterward. The first three volumes chronicled the beginnings of the women's rights movement, including the years that Stone was active. Because of differences between Stone and Stanton that had been highlighted in the schism between NWSA and AWSA, Stone's place in history was marginalized in the work. The text was used as the standard scholarly resource on 19th-century U.S. feminism for much of the 20th century, causing Stone's extensive contribution to be overlooked in many histories of women's causes.
  On August 13, 1968, the 150th anniversary of her birth, the U.S. Postal Service honored Stone with a 50¢ postage stamp in the Prominent Americans series. The image was adapted from a photograph included in Alice Stone Blackwell's biography of Stone.
  In 1986, Stone was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
  In 1999, a series of six tall marble panels with a bronze bust in each was added to the Massachusetts State House; the busts are of Stone, Florence Luscomb, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Sarah Parker Remond, and Dorothea Dix. As well, two quotations from each of those women (including Stone) are etched on their own marble panel, and the wall behind all the panels has wallpaper made of six government documents repeated over and over, with each document being related to a cause of one or more of the women.
  In 2000, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls included a song entitled Lucystoners on her first solo recording, Stag.
  An administration and classroom building on Livingston Campus at Rutgers University in New Jersey is named for Lucy Stone. Warren, Massachusetts contains a Lucy Stone Park, along the Quaboag River. Anne Whitney's 1893 bust of Lucy Stone is on display in Boston's Faneuil Hall building.
  She is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
caption: 50-cent United States Postal Service stamp honoring Stone
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