Statue of Historic Figure: Lucy Stone - Boston, MA

Lucy Stone

Boston, MA

N 42° 20.974 W 071° 04.644

Short Description: 

A marble bust of women's rights activist Lucy Stone is located in the Bates Reading Room of the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library at 700 Boylston St., Boston, MA.

Long Description:

A 2' high white marble bust of Lucy Stone depicts the 19th century abolitionist and women's rights activist from the mid-chest up. She is wearing a V neck blouse and a bonnet.

A metal sign on the plinth of the bust is engraved:

LUCY STONE

A LEADER IN THE CAUSE OF

SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN

A sign on the wall next to the bust is inscribed:

Lucy Stone 1892
Anne Whitney
American, 1821-1915
Marble

Lucy Stone was a prominent American orator,
abolitionist, and suffragist. She significantly
influenced Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton to take up the cause of women's rights;
the three are considered the nineteenth-century
triumvirate of American feminism. This bust
by noted American sculptor Anne Whitney at
one time occupied an obscure spot on the third
floor of the Mckim Building. However, in 1921,
the League of Women Voters lobbied the library's
trustees to relocate it to Bates Hall to mark the
passage of women's suffrage and honor Stone's
contributions. A commemorative portrait of her
daughter, activist Alice Stone Blackwell, is also 
in the collection of the BPL.

____________________________________________________
GIFT OF JUDITH WINSOR SMITH, EDNAH DOW CHENEY,
AND GEORGE A. WALTON.

Lucy Stone was a prominent orator, abolitionist, and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio and was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She was married to Henry B. Blackwell but retained her own name throughout her life.

She worked as a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. After the Civil War she became a strong advocate for women's suffrage and formed the Women's Suffrage Association of Boston. She founded and edited the Women's Journal, a weekly feminist magazine. Stone helped form the National Women's Rights Convention held October 23–24, 1850, in Worcester, MA. She also helped form the American Woman Suffrage Association, which built support for a woman suffrage Constitutional amendment by winning woman suffrage at the state and local levels.