Lucretia Coffin Mott: Early Leader in the Struggle for Women's Rights Within the Society of Friends and the Anti-Slavery Movement
Graduation Date
Spring 2005
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
First Reader
Patricia Dougherty, OP, PhD
Second Reader
Leslie Ross, PhD
Abstract
Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880) was one of the greatest social reformers of the nineteenth century. Her activism placed her at the forefront of the Women’s Rights Movement. She devoted herself to the crusade for equality in all areas including gender, religion, and race. As a Quaker minister in the early nineteenth century, she was at the center of the 1827 schism within the Society of Friends and continued her integral role in the Society throughout her life. This thesis focuses on Mott’s contributions, primarily during the 1830s, as they pertain to her struggle for women’s equality within the Society of Friends and the Anti-Slavery Movement. Mott supported women’s inclusion and equal status in all areas of the Society, including religious and business meetings. She was one of the first women to speak publicly to mixed groups (gender and race) and forged the way for women’s equal participation in the Anti-Slavery Movement. Because of Mott’s fortitude, the rights of women advanced in the early nineteenth century and propelled the impetus for the Women’s Rights Movement. This research suggests that the Women’s Rights Movement began prior to the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention of 1848 and posits that the first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840, generally credited as the impetus for the 1848 convention, was not the driving force for the movement, but rather a set back.