 We want to be something more than the appendages of society. We want that women should be the co-equal of man in all the perils and enjoyment and interest of human life. We want that she should attain to the development of her nature and her womanhood. We want that when she dies it may not be written on her tombstone that she was the relic of somebody. Judith Kaloora is a professional actress, historical interpreter and educator. She founded History at Play in 2010 to chronicle the lives of influential but often forgotten women. Judith holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University and has performed on stages from 42nd Street to London to Boston. And now I'd like to present to you Mrs. Lucy Stone. I am truly glad to be able to stand here today and say that we who advocate the principles on which this convention has been assembled have reason to congratulate ourselves on the progress of our cause. It is now five years since we first met in Central New York, a mere handful of friends to the reform we seek and of our little meeting we thought nothing was heard. It is 1853, the city of New York, our women's rights convention proves more difficult than most. More than once the police are summoned to control the protesters, the men grunting, growling. They clearly had no mothers to teach them better. But by 1853 I already knew freedoms that had been unattainable in my younger years. The simple act of speaking in public before an audience of men and women. What we call promiscuous audiences had been illegal and dangerous. Yet since the days of my youth it has been my hope to dispel the absurdity of our oppression. There is not a man before me now who, if abused as we are, would not make protest like our fathers of the revolution with bullets. But we are not going to do it because we know that thoughts are mightier than bullets. Maybe it was my father who inspired me thus. I am from Massachusetts, West Brookfield. I have nine siblings. I am one of nine siblings. And we have a very close knit family. We watch over one another. We care for one another. But as with any family we have our demons. You see my father has a fondness for cider. And when he drinks his temper flares and my mother works in earnest, but my father will not allow her even the most meager allowance to buy clothing, to buy shoes for my brothers for my sisters and for me. We live on my father's farm, but as my mother forfeited her property rights upon marriage she has no part in the ownership. She works diligently, but every scent that she makes she forfeits to my father as is the law in Massachusetts, as is the law throughout the land. And I remember as a small girl, one night I heard a noise outside the room where I was sleeping and I crept carefully to the doorway and I peered around to see. And I could see my mother tiptoeing to the table where my father kept his coin purse. Finally she untied the purse, removed a few bits of silver, gingerly tied it up once more and placed it down and crept away. My mother would use this money to buy a pair of shoes, to buy clothing for us. But I knew in other homes it was far worse. To see in other homes a woman would work, work earnestly, work to the bone only to forfeit her money to her husband. And would he buy food? No. What would he buy with that money that she had worked so hard to give him? Tell me, cider, the dangerous drink. In many homes it was far worse than in my own, but my mother did toil. Now my brother and my brothers and my father are ardent abolitionists. The plight of the slave is on the forefront of their mind, but the plight of the woman that could be easily explained. Just look to your holy scripture. When I was a young girl I used to question my pastors and time and time again they would quote me Bible scripture. But first, Genesis chapter 3 verse 16, unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband. And he shall rule over thee. When I was a young girl I would sit and muse upon this text. I felt sad at the subservience to which it consigned my entire sex. Had God consigned my entire sex to be subordinate. But when I grew older I learned to read Hebrew and I suggest you do as well as if you want the pages of this book thrown open to you. And I learned that the same word which means shall in Hebrew also means will. Therefore, that very same text might just as reasonably in fact and far more accurately in truth be read as thus. Thy desire will be to thy husband and he will rule over thee. Which you see, it was a prophecy of what was to happen and what will continue to happen just a little while longer. But it was not a commandment to be obeyed. This education, this advancement of my mind, this I have always known to be paramount to achieving equality. My father supported the education of my brothers for each and every one he paid their college tuition. But when I voiced the same desire to receive that same college education myself I was met with nothing but reproach. It seemed the money that I earned was more important to my father than the advancement of my mind. All sixteen dollars per month that I earned was given to him as was the law. I could not tolerate this. We must not wait for the doors to open. We must open the doors ourselves. And so when I was nineteen years old I applied to enroll in the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. My father refused to assist me and so I promised him I would pay my very own tuition, my own room and my own board as well as signing a promissory note to repay him every last cent that he would lose while I was obtaining an education. I was nineteen years old and I arrived at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. I didn't care what I had to give. I wanted an education and here I was and as soon as we started our classes I realized that we would not delve as heavily into the ancient languages, Greek, Latin, Hebrew. I wanted so desperately to understand to realize the true meaning behind the word of God. In just a few months after I began my studies at Mount Holyoke I received a letter. My sister, and my sister Eliza, she has passed. She's ten years my senior but we are very close with one another. She has ten, she has two little daughters and they are very precious to me. My nieces have for once realized that an education would not be mine. I had to be with my family and so I left the Mount Holyoke Seminary and I returned to Westbrook Field and I helped to tend to my mother and to my two young nieces who now were without their own mother. But just one year later tragedy struck my family once more and my sister Rhoda was lost and my mother she tumbled into a depression unlike any I had ever seen before her mourning and her grief it was unparalleled. I desperately tried to lift her up. I desperately tried to wipe away her tears but I was not yet twenty years old and there was so much that I wanted to say and I did not yet know how to do it. I felt I needed to escape. I felt I needed to learn how to speak my mind and there was nothing more I could do for my mother as there was only one college in the United States of America that accepted women and the colored race. I intended to go there. I applied and in the year 1843 I began to travel. I had never been more than twenty miles from my parents home in Westbrook Field but now I traveled by steamship and by railroad and by stagecoach for days I traveled and as I traveled I read the newspapers articles about the Grimke sisters Angelina and Sarah their national lecture tours the promiscuous audiences that they drew they spoke on the issue of human rights something I desperately wanted to speak of reading about the Grimke's filled me with such hope and at the same time filled me with such fear I began to see things that were not there and my speech began to stutter. It felt as though there were a vice a clap squeezing down upon my head just speaking of the migraines which would plague me throughout my life awakens the pain. I'm sorry you must excuse me for a moment. Finally after traveling for several days I was finally at my destination Oberlin Oberlin College in Ohio the only institution to accept both the colored race and women and we were welcomed when we arrived but all was not equal. You see my favorite class was rhetoric but as it was illegal for women to speak in public we were to learn by watching the men speak how ridiculous my friend Antoinette and I dared otherwise. You see my rhetoric teacher was a southerner a very liberal man he had released his slaves long before it was even popular to do so and Net and I approached him and asked him if we could debate one another just for our classmates no one else. You see Net wanted to enter the realm of public speaking as a pastor I as a lecturer and our professor agreed I shall never forget standing across from Antoinette in our classroom looking around the room I could not recognize many of the faces in there these were not only our classmates clearly word had gotten out and there were many more from the school in attendance there was standing room only in the classroom that day I told Net we should have charged admission and then we began to debate one another and I realized I was born to be a public speaker I was born to speak on the issue of human rights although it was a successful discourse all was not accepted you see we were punished for our debate who do you think it was that punished us so tell me my friends who do you think it was who punished us do you think it was the students no do you think you think it was the professors no it was the professor's wives the wives the women who we thought to uplift were the same oppressors holding us down and we were forbidden to have any sort of public forum or debate and so like witches the female students of Oberlin cast out to the woods we set a century at each perimeter so that no one would hear us or see us and there in the middle of the woods of Oberlin Ohio we debated one another I would not leave that college with the reputation of a thorough collegiate course yet have no rhetorical training there was not a single one of us women who could state a question or argue it in successful debate until we had those meetings in 1847 my fellow students nominated me to write the commencement speech for the class of Oberlin but then the faculty told me that I could write it yet I could not read it no act or deed of mine should ever look toward the support of such a principal nor to its toleration I denied and refused the honor and every single one of my fellow classmates both men and women who were asked to write the commencement speech also refused that honor I may not be the commencement speaker for the class of 1847 but I am the very first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree I told my mother and father that I wanted to enter the realm of public speaking and they begged me not to or if I must I should move as far away from Massachusetts as possible surely if I sought a life of ease I would not be a public speaker I began to receive invitations to speak my very first from my brother Bowman he had his own congregation in Gardner Massachusetts and he allowed me to speak on the issue on which I was most emotional and most passionate women's rights but after I began speaking within one year I received an invitation from a man who I held in great esteem his name Garrison Mr William Lloyd Garrison his office is not too far from here right now where we stand and where you sit Mr Garrison and Mr Wendell Phillips approached me and invited to meet me to be an agent in their American anti-slavery society they would pay me six dollars a week to speak on the issue of abolition and as I spoke I realized the vice the clamp would squeeze down upon the side of my head once more I was a woman before I was an abolitionist and I must speak for the women and Mr Garrison and Mr Phillips did not like it it seemed I had stepped out of my acceptable social sphere suffrage and Paul suffrage was seen to be a political topic and women were not supposed to speak on issues of politics suffrage and equality my friends is not political suffrage and equality is moral it is religious it is human these are not issues upon which I could remain silent and so Mr Garrison and I came to an agreement on specific days of the week I would speak of abolition only and on my free days I could speak of women's rights as well and when I did the protesters arrived every time I spoke to promiscuous audiences on the issues of women's rights the protesters would arrive in numbers that I could not imagine they would surround the meeting halls with cayenne pepper and then set it ablaze you know what this causes wheezing the eyes tearing and burning am I the reason that they set fire to cayenne pepper no am I the reason that these protesters threw ice cold water rotten fruit eggs and hymnal books at my face no this this is not a weapon it is fear that drove these protesters to attack me thus and I am not afraid of the fears of the simple-minded and neither were my colleagues Mrs Lucretia Mott and Mrs Elizabeth Katie Stanton at this time were organizing the very first women's rights convention to be held in 1848 Seneca Falls New York and there 100 attendees both men and women gathered to create the declaration of rights and sentiments we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal Seneca Falls 1848 Seneca Falls drew mostly a local audience we realized if we were to gain the attention and the momentum that we deserved we needed a meeting of a grander scale and so just as soon as 1848 had concluded we began to plan our own women's rights convention a truly national convention convention it would meet in Worcester Massachusetts in 1850 I began planning and working me and my colleagues all working day in and day out but life has a very funny way of skewing even your best laid plans I received another letter dear Lucy Luther is ill and I am with child I am afraid for the health of my unborn baby if I care for him any longer please come quickly all my love Phoebe Luther is my brother Phoebe his wife I never wanted a family of my own but I will do anything for my own and so I passed my work on to my colleagues and I traveled to Chicago Illinois and I arrived just in time to see my dear brother Luther in the final horrifying stages of cholera his face and skin were white his lips blue his eyes had sunk into the back of his head I arrived just in time to hold his hand as he passed Phoebe was grief-stricken she was now a part of our family and she would travel back to Massachusetts with me and as we began our travels via stagecoach perhaps it was the strain of travel perhaps it was the grief which bore heavily upon her but she went into labor and the child was born many months early and stillborn and now Phoebe tumbled down into a despair I had seen once before when I was not yet 20 years old when my mother lost Eliza and Rhoda within the span of a year she could not travel she was incapacitated by the grief and so we took up lodgings in a hotel in eastern Chicago and as I tried to care for my dear sister in law wouldn't you know I contracted typhoid typhoid it's known as nervous fever my fever began to soar for over a week it held steady at 104 degrees Fahrenheit I began to stretch at myself there were bugs on me and in the bed I was certain of it I desperately needed a sip of water and Phoebe was too weak to help and I typhoid typhoid generally lasts one month before the infection subsides that is if you survive but the power of the mind is strong and there was somewhere I needed to be there was a women's rights convention that I needed to attend and so I overcame typhoid fever in two and a half weeks and we resumed traveling from Chicago to Worcester I arrived in Worcester two days before the start of our convention and I have attended many conventions in my life but I will always remember my first I was so happy to be there and I was so happy to be alive we want to be something more than the appendages of society we want that women should be the co-equal of man in all the perils and enjoyment and interest of human life we want that she should attain to the development of her nature and her womanhood we want that when she dies it may not be written on her tombstone that she was the relic of somebody and this is what I fear most the loss of identity upon marriage was absolute in massachusetts and throughout the land it is for this reason that I sternly supported divorce you may raise your eyebrows but let me explain my grounds for obtaining a divorce were explicit a woman need be married to a man who was a drunkard and if he were a drunkard she had grounds to leave him and it is for this reason that we earned growing support from the growing temperance movement we were invited to attend temperance meetings throughout the united states but when they invited us to speak the men would not hear us my good friend Antoinette from Oberlin in three days time she could not complete a speech that should have taken three minutes and one one convention I attended in new york city the chairman said women in breeches are a disgrace I'm wearing pantaloons sir not breeches am I so disgraceful I never felt such physical comfort as when I wore my pantaloons and I never felt such mental anguish as when I wore my pantaloons the simple act of no longer needing to hold my petticoats up when I walked up and down a flight of stairs what could I hold in my hands now that I did not need to hold my skirts books knowledge but I could not wear them in public the outcry was tremendous and so I saved the pantaloons for my private home and I resumed my petticoats formally in public it seemed we would not have the support from the temperance movement that we had hoped for so I continued to speak on the issue of abolition I continued to tour the united states and draw hundreds and thousands to see me and hear me and then I met Harry Henry Brown Blackwell he was introduced to me by a friend of mr. garrison's here he is he's a looker don't you think the day I met Harry I had just given a speech and he approached me and he said to me that he believed I was a born locomotive and that since he believed he would never see me again then he better ask me to marry him right then and there I'm sorry but I refuse your honor yet I knew I would see Harry again and we were indeed married two years later at my parents farm in west brookfield you see Harry believed that women and men should be co-equals in all aspects of their lives and their partnership it was Harry who suggested that we write a marriage protest and this protest was read at our nuptials and published in every single newspaper across the united states of america my favorite part read thus we protest against the whole system by which the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage so that in most states she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence nor can she make a will nor sue or be sued in her own in her own name pardon me nor inherit property once Harry and I were married I began to refer to myself as mrs lucy stone blackwell and all at once I realized something did not feel right I had spent my entire life fighting to become the person that I am and now I relinquished my name a woman should no more take her husband's name than he should take hers and so I demanded that I be referred to as mrs lucy stone and I requested that newspapers and publications treat me the same and call me by that name though they rarely did thus I am the very first woman in the united states of america to maintain my maiden name when I was married and that was not my only protest you see shortly after Harry and I were married we gave birth to our daughter Alice and I realized very quickly something that I had feared had been entirely inaccurate I thought I would lose my identity upon marriage upon having children but it was not true in Alice my identity grew stronger but as I cared for her Harry went traveling you see Harry was certain that he knew where the railroad was going to be built he was wrong nevertheless he was away for quite some time and while he was away I received a property tax on our home in new jersey I thought this rather interesting I was responsible enough to pay a property tax on my home yet not responsible enough to vote is this not what our fathers of the revolution fought for taxation without representation I refused to pay the tax and the constable came to my home he barged into my home and he began to drag a furniture a dining table and chairs a portrait of Mr Garrison which hung on the wall he dragged these items out into the front yard and proceeded to hold a public auction of course it was meant to demoralize me neighbors came and watched and one neighbor kept volunteering to bid over and over he bid on my furniture and my housewares until the property tax had been fulfilled when the constable had collected his ten dollars and fifty cents worth of taxes he laughed and my neighbor returned all of my items to me Alice's infancy coincided with the great civil war I had fought for 20 years on the issue of abolition and now it seemed we would finally see our dream come true but the great war put a complete halt to the fight for women's rights and perhaps it was the wisdom of a mother that taught me that small steps are best for achieving a larger goal for with the end of the civil war and the proclamation from president Lincoln father Abraham the emancipation of the slaves was fulfilled the next question on the table suffrage for the colored free man but the man only not the women I realizing that small steps were needed supported the colored vote while my colleagues miss Susan B Anthony who had heard me speak in New York City and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not agree you see they believed in universal suffrage or no suffrage at all and it is for this reason that we began to split they becoming more radical believing in easy divorce I now happily married and with child believed that free love is free lust and I shall have no part of it as our division increased Stanton and Anthony came to be known as new women while I and my more conservative approach was a steel engraving feminist our differences continued after the war ended Alice and Harry and I returned to my home of Massachusetts and settled here in Boston we opened a publishing office where we began a publication intended to educate the people on the issue of human rights we all organized a group called the American Women's Suffrage Association my pride and joy to this day Mrs. Anthony and Miss Stanton organized their own group the National Women's Suffrage Association it allowed only women while our group allowed both men and women you see I knew that if we were to obtain the vote it is the men who would give it to us we could not get it on our own we needed to work with our brothers our women's journals started out small a circulation of just 2,000 homes we released the first issue on the two-year anniversary of Miss Susan B Anthony's publication which she called the revolution the revolution was meant to shock and scare only female writers were allowed to submit a woman's journal on the other hand was meant to cultivate and educate the minds of all men and women encouraged to write I would serve as editor my husband would serve as editor my daughter would serve as editor 61 years a woman's journal reached a beautiful circulation of nearly 40,000 homes 20 years would pass while the National Women's Suffrage Association and the American Women's Suffrage Association operated independently from one another we had spent so much of our lives working toward the same goal yet now we had a schism dividing us and we were not seeing the progress that we should have been seeing at this time it was almost the turn of the 20th century yet women still did not have the right to vote I couldn't bear the thought that I would leave this world without seeing our organizations combined without having our forces united once more and so when I was 69 years old I approached Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton and I asked them please let us have a merger after many talks there was agreement we could do more working together than we could divide it the National American Women's Suffrage Association was formed and almost at once my heart began to fail I was not able to attend the first of our many meetings I would have to pass my work on to others I could no longer travel and lectures were impossible for me to obtain at this point I passed my work on to my protégés women like Carrie Chapman Cat would take on the women's rights movement for me the morning star as I was called was burning out but at 1893 I traveled for one last trip to Chicago with my daughter Alice it was the last convention that I would have the strength to attend of today not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned they do not realize the power they have been granted only recently my speech was weak Mrs. Stanton was brilliant by comparison my back was bowing my heart was breaking and the morning star of the women's rights triumvirate was burning out when I died it was the most highly reported death of a woman in the United States of America newspapers all over the country posted word of my death my final will and testament stated that I was to be cremated but as no crematorium facility existed in massachusetts my body remained in mortuary for two months while one was built at forest hills in jamaica plain there my ashes remain in the columbarium 40 years I spent over 40 years of my life fighting for women's rights the rights of the colored race and the rights of humans all over the world and for all of this more people remember me for my stubborn refusal to keep my husband's name when I married miss anthony and mrs. Stanton created an anthology of the women's rights movement and perhaps because of our 20 year schism my name is mentioned a mere handful of times now there are women all over the united states who maintain their maiden name upon marriage lucy stoners they are called they may keep their names but may they keep my legacy it is now 96 years since women have earned the right to vote we know that all brothers fathers and husbands who are truly honorable men and all mothers sisters and wives who are truly worthy of those names will stand by our side they will put their hands to our hands their hearts to ours then we will travel together as fellow voyagers then we will change this system which is based on disorder into a system based on right then will the fellow voyagers through life travel once more then will the morning stars sing again for joy and the old paradise shall be regained I am your morning star I am mrs. Lucy stone and I thank you I have been writing his elegy in my head during the seven hour drive there and trying not to thinking meant not thinking it meant imagining my brother surrounded by light