By Alice Combs | August 5, 2020 | Based on Sex, Triumph over Discrimination

The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, became law one hundred years ago this month, and today is my thirty-first wedding anniversary. In celebration, I offer the following excerpt from my essay Strong Women and the Men Who Loved Them. I consider myself a strong woman, and am ecstatic to have such a loving partner for exactly thirty-one years. Several boyfriends, and even an ex-husband, felt threatened by my inner strength, but Michael, my husband, finds it attractive. That was also the case with the husband of Lucy Stone.

Over 200 years ago, Lucy was one of nine children born to traditional parents in Massachusetts. Her father was autocratic, and her mother worked hard to keep the house running smoothly for her husband and their children. Lucy didn’t want a life like her mother’s, and was determined to be a spinster. Like most parents at the time, Lucy’s father and compliant mother expected their daughters’ education to end immediately after high school—after which the girls should seek good husbands. Lucy’s father therefore refused her any financial support for college, but he did pay the tuition for his sons. Nonetheless, he lent Lucy tuition money—contingent on a promissory note, which she later honored.

Lucy took issue with all discrimination. She vehemently opposed sexual and racial inequality. She taught school to defray her college expenses, and openly complained that female teachers earned only a third to half as much as male teachers did. Despite her financial struggles, she put money aside to support the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Injustice of any kind outraged Lucy. Marching to her own tune, she became openly disdainful of marriage, spoke passionately for women’s rights and abolishing slavery, and, after the Civil War, advocated for the Negro vote. Not all abolitionists supported women’s issues regarding legal standing equal to that of husbands, pay scales equal to men’s, and voting rights, and neither did all feminists support abolition or voting rights for Negroes.

Lucy became an accomplished lecturer, having given her first public speech in 1846 when she was nearly twenty-eight years old. Earlier, regarding a female speaking to an audience of men and women, her father commented, “When the sluts are out, the dogs will bark.” Rather than dissuading Lucy, those words actually gave her greater impetus to become a speaker. In secret, Lucy and her friend Nette formed a women’s debate club with several others, and later claimed they had founded America’s first female debating society.

After Lucy had gained notoriety, she attracted the romantic attention of Henry Blackwell. Lucy had previously been courted by others, but never so persistently as by Blackwell. Before he became enchanted with Lucy, Henry had hoped to marry an intelligent woman of fortune. Lucy was intelligent and earned more from lecturing than Henry earned from his hardware store. Though Lucy had by then become well known, she was far from wealthy; however, the two were intellectually compatible, impressed with each other’s character, and neither of them drank alcohol. In fact, Lucy had given some lectures promoting temperance.

In response to Lucy’s objections about matrimony, Henry insisted he wanted a marriage of equals, and vowed that he would publicly denounce all laws that made a wife subservient to her husband. Lucy appreciated Henry’s attitude and loved him, but objected to marital laws as well as Henry’s apparent lack of ambition and his dependence on the approval of others.

In 1854, Henry won Lucy’s admiration when he broke a federal law and aroused public disapproval by rescuing a slave girl from her master and mistress. Less than a year later Lucy and Henry were husband and wife, though their marriage was a most unusual one: Lucy kept her maiden name, stating, “A wife should no more take her husband’s name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost.” The couple had jointly written “The Protest,” a document that condemned laws that gave husbands greater control than their wives. This was printed in The New York Times and other notable newspapers, and received disdainful responses. With Henry’s blessing, Lucy continued the busy schedule of her speaking career. Also, Henry agreed that they would keep their finances separate.

Two and a half years later Lucy gave birth to the couple’s only child, a daughter. The family was a happy one, and Lucy and Henry remained in love throughout their thirty-eight years together. When, in 1893, Lucy died, Henry was devastated.