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Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality

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...but they and the entire women's rights movement owe a great deal to Lucy Stone (1818-1893). This extensive biography profiles the woman who makes her way from a farm in central Massachusetts to Oberlin College (the only institution admitting women and blacks at the time), and then on to the lecture circuit and the issues of anti-slavery and suffrage. A fiercely-independent woman who vows never to marry, she fends off and is simultaneously intrigued by romantic advances made to her by Henry Blackwell, the Ralph Kramden of his day. They marry in 1855. Lucy continues her speaking tours, eventually takes care of daughter Alice, publishes the Women's Journal, and finances all of Henry's ill-fated get-rich-quick schemes. Intertwined with the details of her personal life are her relationships with the key people in both movements (Anthony, Stanton, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison) and the splits with leaders of both. Thanks to many pieces of archived correspondence, we can know the reasons for the rift among suffrage leaders, the division into separate organizations, and their reunion many years later. A fascinating must-read for feminists of all dimensions.