Between a Stone and a Hard History

I've embarked upon Howard Zinn's classic 700-page tome A People's History of the United States as pleasure reading -- now that school's started my progress in it will go about as far over the course of the semester as it did in a week of August. The book is enlightening in the way that it's showing me whole new ways to be cynical, ashamed and -- OK -- occasionally hopeful about our country.

One section that strikes me in particular is the beginnings of the movement for women's rights, which first appeared as repressed rumblings in the mid-1800's with Amelia Bloomer's new style of dress meant to liberate women's abilities by freeing their physical movements. By the 1820's, women -- whom Zinn calls "the intimately oppressed" -- had been introduced to factory work by the beckoning of capitalism and its infinitely churning profit motives. Twenty years later they were starting to organize and gather en masse to protest for better wages and working conditions. And between 1840 and 1870 women's literacy doubled.

But all of this improvement didn't just happen by the magical workings of unseen natural forces. It happened thanks to the efforts of people like Lucy Stone, a feisty female and original Oberlin activist. The first known American woman to use her birth name after marriage, Stone is said to have delivered a speech that moved Susan B. Anthony to take up the fight for women's rights.



Stone developed her inspirational oratory skills at Oberlin in the 1840's, despite the fact that the school's rhetoric class only permitted men to debate publicly. At one point Stone and fellow student activist Antoinette Brown convinced the head of the department to let them debate each other in public. The session was hailed as "exceptionally brilliant," but the Ladies' Board, a group of faculty wives, raised so much protest that they were never able to repeat the performance.

When it came time for Stone to graduate she was approached and asked to write the commencement address. The only catch -- it would have to be read by a man. Stone appealed for the right to present her own writing, but it was no hope. Once again, even the Ladies' Board stood in her way. Being a strong, self-respecting person, Stone refused to write the address, saying she would do nothing to acknowledge "the rectitude of the principle which takes away from women their equal rights, and denies to them the privilege of being co-laborers with men in any sphere to which their ability makes them adequate; and that no word or deed of mine should ever look towards the support of such a principle, or even to its toleration."

Her spirit was infectious; several others who had been asked to write essays for graduation boycotted with her. During her time at Oberlin Lucy Stone was a whirlwind of radical activism. When she wasn't working three jobs she was active in the peace society, in antislavery work, teaching colored students and setting up a debate club for girls which was held secretly in nearby woods.

Stone can be an inspiration to every Oberlin student who is proud of their school's activist history but not totally aware of the specifics of it. History moves forward when strong, courageous people swim against the tide of backward movements. Small acts of justified defiance and activism do have meaning -- Oberlin initiatives we see today like SEED House and student groups tutoring at public schools and volunteering with Murray Ridge make real differences in people's lives. Those are projects students undertook in the face of uncertainty and fear about what might be impossible or infeasible. And they're making the world a better place.