Lucretia Coffin Mott, a Quaker minister, protested injustices against women and slaves. Mott explained that she grew up “so thoroughly imbued with women’s rights that it was the most important question” of her life. Mott, along with her supportive husband, agued ardently for the abolitionist cause under the Garrisonians as a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Mott’s stymied participation in the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 brought her into contact with Elizabeth Cady Stanton with whom she formed a long and prolific collaboration.

Angered by their exclusion in the convention, the two formed a collaboration that resulted in the 1848 Seneca Falls meeting and the proposal of the “Declaration of Sentiments.” Following the convention Mott continued her crusade for women’s equality by speaking at ensuing annual women’s rights conventions and publishing Discourse on Women – a reasoned account of the history of women’s repression. In 1866 Mott became the first president of the American Equal Rights Association. Dedicated to all forms of human freedom, Mott argued as ardently for women’s rights as for black rights, including suffrage, education, and economic aid. Mott played a major role in the woman suffrage movement through her life.

 

 

Works Cited:

• Reprinted from NWHM Cyber Exhibit "Rights for Women"
  Author Kristina Gupta
• PHOTO: Lucretia Coffin Mott, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (mnwp 275011)
  

 

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