March is Women’s History Month. That statement in and of itself says two things: We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go – it should simply be history. That point and many others were the topic of author Barbara Berenson’s presentation at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library.
Berenson is herself a statement of what women can accomplish when given the space to do so. She is a retired senior attorney for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, a historian, and the author of four books on the themes of Boston-based history, women’s history, and abolition.
On March 7 she spoke about her latest book titled Massachusetts in the Women’s Suffrage Movement (2018, The History Press). The presentation, while delving into the role of Massachusetts women in the quest to obtain the right the vote, positioned local women as the first to push for such rights.
Massachusetts has long been known as a seat for those who believed that slavery should be abolished. Many of those forward-thinking humanitarians were women. Berenson pointed to the long path, the years of struggle, the foundation of the suffrage movement that all took place in the commonwealth primarily by women. “It shows the importance of never giving up,” she said.
Berenson said she wrote the book to highlight the very beginnings of the suffrage movement and the role of women from this area. Not so much to cast dispersions on better-known women of the movement such as Susan B. Anthony but to bring forward such great Massachusetts luminaries as Lucy Stone.
From 1843 to 1847, Stone attended Oberlin College where she heard William Lloyd Garrison, the well-known abolitionist, speak. His speeches brought out men and women, which was, “…a huge revolutionary impulse for those times,” Berenson stated. Garrison’s message struck a chord in Stone that translated into her becoming a lecturer and protagonist against slavery. While speaking on behalf of abolition, she also began to speak on the issue of voting rights for women.
Prior to Stone’s emergence as a forceful public speaker, there were the Grimke sisters.
Angelina and Sarah Grimke were raised by a prosperous plantation owner in South Carolina, yet their thinking turned against owning humans. They were outspoken activists and acknowledged by Garrison as critical to his campaign to end slavery. They traveled far and wide speaking out against slavery.
Berenson said that many women who were abolitionists also set the stage for what would become the women’s rights movement. But, she said, “…in order to understand what came to pass we need to understand the groundwork.” The early protagonists speaking out for the women’s right to vote were doing so by the 1830s, she said.
Years later in Seneca Falls, New York, new voices were being heard. “A new spirit was growing across the land,” regarding women’s rights, Berenson said. Those voices were coming from Cate Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who helped to publish a manifesto titled a Declaration of Sentiments which made the claim for women’s equality. The year was 1848. “Susan B. Anthony didn’t come on the scene until 1852 after attending the 1850 Worcester First National Women’s Rights Conventions,” Berenson said.
So why then do we so closely associate suffrage with Anthony versus Stone? Berenson’s explanation was clear. “Anthony and Stanton wrote six volumes on women’s suffrage.” Stone did not.
There was another point Berenson made that spoke to how one’s point of view influences how one spends his or her energy. Stone continued to speak out against slavery while also speaking out for women. Anthony and her group focused on women, white women.
Stone preceded Anthony in death, and her flame dimmed over the preceding decades. Today her voice is once again being recognized, and her work on behalf of all those struggling under suppressive laws rings anew.
While the Civil War and the Glided Age further suppressed attempts for women to gain the vote, times did slowly change. And in spite of the early women’s movement “making a pact with the devil” to get the right to vote passed for white women, eventually that right expanded – by 1965 all women and all men could vote.
What began humbly in Massachusetts in the 1830s is celebrated today at both the state and federal levels, and with renewed hindsight, the messages of all the suffragists are now being heard. To learn more visit www.womenshistory.org. To learn more about the author visit www.barbarafberenson.com.
Mattapoisett Free Public Library
By Marilou Newell