Born Lucretia Coffin into a Quaker community in Massachusetts, "thoroughly imbued with women's rights" (in her words). In America she helped organize women's abolitionist societies, since the anti-slavery organizations would not admit women as members. In 1840, she was selected as a delegate to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, which she found controlled by anti-slavery factions opposed to public speaking and action by women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton later credited conversations with Lucretia Mott, while seated in the segregated women's section, with the idea of the holding a women's rights convention. Elected as the first president of the American Equal Rights Convention after the end of the Civil War, Mott strove a few years later to reconcile the two factions that split over the priorities between woman suffrage and black male suffrage. She continued her involvement in causes for peace and equality through her later years. Mott died in 1880, twelve years after her husband's death. "The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source." - Lucretia Mott
Article by Alexander S
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