Lucy
Stone
1818-1893
An early suffragist who is credited with converting Susan
B. Anthony to the cause in 1852. Until then, Anthony had mostly been
involved in the temperance movement.
In 1855 Stone married Henry Blackwell. At the ceremony the minister
read a statement from the bride and groom, announcing that Stone would
keep her own name. The statement said that current marriage laws
“refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while
they confer on the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority,
investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise,
and which no man should possess.”