Alice Stone Blackwell - Infinite Women

Born: 14 September 1857, United States
Died: 15 March 1950
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Born into a radical and revolutionary family, Alice Stone Blackwell dedicated her life to fighting for universal suffrage and advocating for oppressed peoples. A writer, editor, and translator, Blackwell used the art of language to amplify her voice and the voices of others. While instrumental to the suffrage movement, her advocacy did not end after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. She spent her later life promoting radical social causes and honoring the legacy of her mother, Lucy Stone.
Born September 14, 1857 in Orange, New Jersey, Alice Stone Blackwell grew up in a family immersed in the fight for suffrage and women’s rights. At a young age her family moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts. Her mother, Lucy Stone, a prominent suffragist and abolitionist, played an influential role in the Boston suffrage community. Stone, a “bone fide pioneer of her time,”1 instilled within Blackwell the ideals of equality for all.
Her father, Henry Blackwell, also a suffragist and abolitionist, believed in marriage equality. Upon his marriage to Lucy Stone, the two read a statement together denouncing all legal portions of marriage in which a woman must be subservient to her husband. Many of Blackwell’s extended family members were ground-breaking in their own right. These included Elizabeth Blackwell, the nation’s first female doctor, and Antoinette Louis Brown Blackwell, the first woman ordained minister in the Congregational Church.
Growing up in greater Boston, Alice witnessed her mother’s remarkable commitment to the suffrage movement. This included when Stone made the decision to split from her work with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton due to disagreements about universal suffrage. Stone founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) when Alice was twelve years old. Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in response. This began a 21 year divide within the suffrage movement.
Blackwell attended college at Boston University in 1881, one of two women in a class of 28. Upon graduation, she began work at The Woman’s Journal, the AWSA-led publication located in downtown Boston. For the next thirty five years, Blackwell served as an editor for the paper. The Woman’s Journal served as the country’s leading women’s rights newspaper. From 1887 to 1905, she founded and edited The Woman’s Column, a weekly newsletter that gathered updates on social and suffrage matters.
In what remains one of her most important contributions to the suffrage movement, Blackwell helped bridge the divide between Stone’s AWSA and Anthony and Stanton’s NWSA. In 1890, the organizations formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Blackwell knew that young women interested in suffrage did not understand why two separate organizations existed. She argued, “Nothing really stood in the way [of the merger] except unpleasant feelings engendered during the long separation, and those could be overcome, and were overcome, for the good of the cause to which both sides were sincerely devoted.”9 Blackwell’s vision for the unification of the two organizations strengthened the suffrage movement. Blackwell served as the recording secretary of the NAWSA until 1918.
In 1893, Lucy Stone passed away. Blackwell became co-editor of The Women’s Journal with her father, and then the sole editor of the journal upon Henry Blackwell’s passing in 1909. She remained editor of the paper until 1917.
Blackwell took strong positions as editor of The Woman’s Journal. In this role, she used the paper to advocate for many other causes, such as the Armenian genocide. Blackwell helped create the “Friends of Armenia” society, and before long “became central to launching America’s first international human rights movement.” The society provided information about the Armenia genocide to American media, and Blackwell often used the platform of The Woman’s Journal to report on the matter.
Through orchestrating the creation of the NAWSA and her relentless campaigning through The Woman’s Journal, Blackwell cemented the ratification of the 19th Amendment. However, Blackwell recognized this was not the end of her work pushing for social change. As suffragist Florence Luscomb noted, “Alice Stone Blackwell, the 63 year old woman whose whole life was the suffrage cause, was the one person in that moment of victory who turned their head towards the future.”
Blackwell continued to “promote revolution” in the United States and abroad. After the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Blackwell became involved in supporting the Russian Revolution. She helped found the Friends of Russian Freedom group15 and used The Woman’s Journal to speak out against the Russian regime. Blackwell’s Woman’s Journal was one of the few predominantly White publications that compared Russia’s oppression of its Jewish people to the oppression of Black Americans.
“Avowed socialist radical” Blackwell involved herself in many social rights organizations, such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Progressive Party, and the American Peace Society. In 1920, Blackwell contributed to creating the League of Women Voters in Massachusetts, an organization still present.
In addition to her activism, Blackwell translated works of poetry from oppressed foreign writers. Mindful of the legacy of her mother and the suffrage movement, Black understood the importance of telling her mother’s story. Published in 1930, Lucy Stone, A Pioneer in Women’s Rights ensured the legacy of Blackwell’s mother through the craft of writing, once again giving a voice to the voiceless.
Blackwell died in Cambridge on March 15, 1950. Her role within the suffrage movement proved crucial to ratifying the 19th Amendment when she orchestrated the two rival suffrage organizations to come together. Her advocacy through The Woman’s Journal and poetry serve as a template for advocacy through language to this day.

The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

1857, Sept. 14 Born, East Orange, N.J.
1881 Graduated, Boston University, Boston, Mass.
1883-1909 Assistant editor, Woman’s Journal
1886-1905 Editor, The Woman’s Column
1909-1917 Editor-in-chief, Woman’s Journal
1929 Translated Some Spanish-American Poets (New York: D. Appleton. 559 pp.)
1930 Published Lucy Stone, Pioneer of Women’s Rights (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 313 pp.)
1950, Mar. 15 Died, Cambridge, Mass.

The following is excerpted from Representative Women of New England, published in 1904. It was written by Mary H. Graves.

ALICE STONE BLACK WELL was born in Orange, N. J., September 14, 1857, the daughter of Henry B. Blackwell and his wife, Lucy Stone. In 1869 her parents moved to Massachusetts. She was fitted for college at Chauncy Hall School in Boston, where she took the Thayer prize for English composition and a special prize for knowledge of Shakespeare. She graduated from the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University with honors in 1881, and began in the same year to help her parents edit the Woman’s Journal. For the last sixteen years she has also edited a small fortnightly paper called the Woman’s Column, devoted to equal suffrage. She was largely instrumental in persuading the two branches of the Woman’s Suffrage Association, which had split twenty years before, to reunite in 1889; and she has since been recording secretary of the united society, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She is also chairman of the Executive Committee of the New England Woman Suffrage Association and chairman of the Literature Committee of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. She has been much interested in the Armenian question, has for many years been in the habit of befriending Armenian immigrants, and is the author of “Armenian Poems,” a small volume of verse translated from the Armenian. She is also the compiler, with the Rev. Anna H. Shaw and Miss Lucy E. Anthony, of a book of equal rights recitations, “The Yellow Ribbon Speaker.” She was for some years Associate National Superintendent of Franchise for the W. C. T. U. She lectures occasionally, and is interested in a number of reforms.

Miss Blackwell inherits much of her mother’s tenacity and singleness of purpose. Endowed with a ready wit and retentive memory, in legislative hearings for and against suffrage she retains a vivid recollection of all that is said in opposition, and is usually able to turn the weapons of her antagonists against them- selves. Among the younger advocates of suffrage she is distinguished for her valuable and acceptable service.

The first part of her married life was spent in Boston. At present the family make their home during the winter season with Mrs. Fitz’s father, David Slade, of Chelsea. They have an attractive summer residence at Wakefield, Mass. Three sturdy boys furnish inspiration for the mother’s best effort.

The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.

An American reformer, daughter of Lucy Stone and niece of Elizabeth Blackwell. In 1885-1905 she edited a paper called the “Woman’s Column.” Devoting her main energies to the cause of woman’s suffrage, she was made chairman of the literature committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She also labored for the Armenians and other oppressed peoples, and wrote “Armenian Poems” (1896), “Songs of Russia” (1906), and “Songs of Grief and Joy” (1907), translated from the Yiddish.

The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.

BLACKWELL, Miss Alice Stone, journalist, born in Orange, N. J., 14th September, 1857. She is the daughter of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell. She was graduated from Boston University with honors in 1881, and has been on the staff of the “Woman’s Journal” ever since. During the last few years she has also edited a small weekly paper devoted to woman suffrage, called the “Woman’s Column.”