Lucy Stone .
Lucy Stone, was an "American reformer", who was a pioneer in the movement for women's rights. She was born near West Brookfield, Mass., on Aug. 13, 1818. Lucy accomplished many firsts for women everywhere. She was the first woman to graduate from college in Massachusetts, the first to keep her maiden name, and she held the first Woman's Rights Convention. Along with those accomplishments she achieved many goals in the fight for not only Woman"s rights, but African American's rights as well. Without her dedication and persistence women might never have had the rights that we have today. Disagreeing with her father's belief that men should be dominant over women,Lucy undertook to educate herself. At the age of sixteen, she worked as a teacher. With the low wages then paid to women, it took Lucy nine years to save up enough money to enter college. There was no difficulty in choosing a school, because the only one that admitted women was Oberlin College in Ohio. Lucy graduated in 1847 with high honors and became an outspoken abolitionist. Sweeping the country with her wonderful gift of oratory, she interlaced her talks for the rights of slaves with her pleas for women's rights. In 1850 she held the first Woman's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. Other women activists such as Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined together to fight for women's rights, but the issue of whether blacks should vote first became an issue. When the fifteenth amendment came into ratification, Lucy supported it stating, "it is the Negro's hour", and that women could afford to wait a few years to vote. This led the women's suffrage movement to split, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony on one side, and Lucy on the other along with Julia Ward Howe.
