Lucy Stone - The Progress of Fifty Years - 1893 Speech

Lucy Stone - The Progress of Fifty Years - 1893 Speech This was Lucy Stones last public speech, and she died a few months later at age 75. The speech was originally presented as a speech to the Congress of Women held in the Womans Building at the Worlds Columbian Exposition (Worlds Fair), Chicago, 1893.  Stone is known as a proponent of womens suffrage and, earlier in her life, as an abolitionist. A short biography below (before Stones speech) was published with the speech in the official edition of the record of the Congress of Women, published at the direction of the Lady Managers, a committee charged by the United States Congress with overseeing the Womans Building and its events. Points covered in this speech: Education: A reflection that Oberlin College opened itself to both sexes and to all classes in 1833, followed by Mary Lyon opening Mt. Holyoke.Free speech: Anti-Slavery activism had led to questioning womens role as well, though the anti-slavery movement was divided on womens rights. She mentions the Grimke sisters and Abby Kelly.  Abby Kellys role in establishing the right to free speech for women, defended by Garrison and Phillips.Womens Sphere and womens work: Women began to enter new occupations. She mentions Harriet Hosmer among artists, business owners, Elizabeth Blackwell and medicine, ministry and Antoinette Brown, law and Lelia Robinson.Married womens rights: The property rights and legal existence of married women.Political power: Some limited suffrage for women had already been won, including full suffrage in Wyoming, school and municipal suffrage in other places.Womens organizations: Womens clubs, colleges for women and co-educational colleges, the  Womans Christian T emperance Union  and other reform groups and beneficent societies, factory, and prison inspectors, and the Board of Lady Managers for the Columbian Exposition, at which Stone was speaking. She closed with: And not one of these things was allowed women fifty years ago, except the opening at Oberlin.  By what toil and fatigue and patience and strife and the beautiful law of growth has all this been wrought? These things have not come of themselves. They could not have occurred except as the great movement for women has brought them out and about. They are part of the eternal order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things. Full text:  The Progress of Fifty Years: Lucy Stone, 1893​ Related Primary Source Material on This Site: Laura Ormiston Chant: The Duty of God to Man  - 1893Ida Hultin: Essential Oneness of Ethical Ideas  - 1893Marriage Protest of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell  - 1855