Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone was already a devout abolitionist when she graduated from Oberlin in 1847, but the next year, she was riveted upon seeing Hiram Powers’s statue The Greek Slave in Boston. She became more focused on women’s rights, defending herself from critics by stating, “I was a woman before I was an abolitionist.”

Stone helped found the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, but the Fifteenth Amendment divided the suffrage movement in two factions in 1870. Suffragists were keenly aware that the voting rights extended only to male citizens placed women in a more precarious position. Competing suffrage priorities—who should get the vote first, African American men or, separately, white women—split the movement. Stone became the leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association, which was dedicated to achieving woman suffrage, especially through state-level legislation. At the same time, it supported African American civil rights.