Lucretia Mott
Another prominent name in the Quaker movement was Lucretia Mott, a name most associated with the US abolition movement, but also a powerful force in the growing feminist movement in the United States. Born in 1793, the daughter of a Nantucket ship’s captain, she was raised in Quaker tradition and was inculcated from a very early age with the strong abolitionist position of the Quakers. She was also surrounded, again through Quaker influence, with strong female role models, and when she took up a teaching position in New York, a great deal of her emphasis was on promoting education for girls.
Feminism in the United States at that time was a secondary social issue to the much greater movement advocating abolition. Lucretia Mott was a founding member and president of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, inaugurated in 1833. Her famous anathema was vocal abolitionist who still took sugar in their tea
In 1840, she travelled to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention, but she was denied a seat at the conference because of her gender, after which she placed herself outside the venue and preached, not only the anti-slavery message of the Quakers, but also the doctrine of female equality. In London she made the acquaintance of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a fellow American, and wife of abolitionist delegate Henry Stanton. The two women became lifelong friends, and in partnership launched the American Women’s Rights Movement in New York in 1848. Lucretia Mott was elected president of the Association in 1852.
Her feminist philosophy was presented in her Discourse on Women, first published in 1850, in which she argued that the female role in society was defined less by innate inferiority that a lack of equal opportunity and access to education.
After the Civil War, and the advent of abolition, Lucretia Mott entered the cause of black suffrage and aid for emancipated blacks. She was in every respect a pioneering social reformer in the United States, and a powerful voice in the merging feminist movement.