After defending her sanity at trial in 1864, Packard campaigned to ensure the rights of the mentally ill as well as those of married women. She publicized the story of her hospitalization at the hands of her husband in order to prevent the abuse and neglect of others vulnerable before the law.
Lucretia Coffin Mott was an early feminist activist and strong advocate for ending slavery. A powerful orator, she dedicated her life to speaking out against racial and gender injustice.
A leading suffragist and abolitionist, Lucy Stone dedicated her life to battling inequality on all fronts. She was the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree and she defied gender norms when she famously wrote marriage vows to reflect her egalitarian beliefs and refused to take her husband’s last name.
Hailed for her now-famous admonition that the Founding Fathers “remember the ladies” in their new laws, Abigail Adams was not only an early advocate for women’s rights, she was a vital confidant and advisor to her husband John Adams, the nation’s second president. She opposed slavery and supported women’s education.
Abolitionist author, Harriet Beecher Stowe rose to fame in 1851 with the publication of her best-selling book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which highlighted the evils of slavery, angered the slaveholding South, and inspired pro-slavery copy-cat works in defense of the institution of slavery.
Writer, lecturer, abolitionist and suffragist, Julia Ward Howe not only authored the Civil War anthem “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but she also co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.
Even though Sarah Moore Grimké was shy, she often spoke in front of large crowds with her sister Angelina. The two sisters became the first women to speak in front of a state legislature as representatives of the American Anti-Slavery Society. They also became active writers and speakers for women’s rights. Their ideas were so different from most of the ideas in the community that people burned their writings and angry mobs protested their speeches. However, Grimké and her sister would not let that stop her from making a difference for women and African Americans.
Although raised on a slave-owning plantation in South Carolina, Angelina Emily Grimké Weld grew up to become an ardent abolitionist writer and speaker, as well as a women’s rights activist. She and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké were among the first women to speak in public against slavery, defying gender norms and risking violence in doing so. Beyond ending slavery, their mission—highly radical for the times—was to promote racial and gender equality.
A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Her Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
Less than one year after the adoption of the Massachusetts State Constitution, a brave enslaved woman challenged the document’s proposed principles. Motivated by the promise of liberty, Elizabeth Freeman, born as “Mum Bett,” became the first African American woman to successfully file a lawsuit for freedom in the state of Massachusetts. This case marked the beginning of a group of “freedom suits” that would ultimately lead the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to outlaw slavery in their state.