KALAMAZOO, MI – A Kalamazoo women's rights pioneer was honored in Washington on the bicentennial of her birth.
Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, who was known as a forceful advocate for women's education and who helped get the first woman enrolled at the University of Michigan, received a tribute from Congressman Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, Thursday, which was read into the congressional record.
"Mr. Speaker, Women's History Month is a time for all Americans to pay tribute to the generations of women who have made our world a better place in which to live. Today, it is my great honor to recognize Kalamazoo, Michigan's Lucinda Hinsdale Stone for her efforts to advance education reform and women's rights," Upton said.
Stone was born in Vermont in 1814, and was the youngest of 12 children, according to a biography on the Kalamazoo Public Library's website. She and her husband, James Stone, moved to Kalamazoo in 1843, when James Stone was named the principal of the Kalamazoo Branch of the University of Michigan, which became Kalamazoo College. Lucinda Stone began teaching and eventually was named head of the Ladies Department of the college.
"Together, Lucinda and James Stone helped shape the school's direction, in part by introducing coeducation and promoting abolitionism and women's rights," Upton said.
Among the Stones' innovations, which were considered radical
at the time, female students were allowed to attend classes with male students
and were given access to the same curriculum.
"James and Lucinda Stone had led Kalamazoo College for twenty remarkable years, from its infancy to its state charter and a stellar reputation. They embraced evolutionary theory, espoused abolitionism and women's rights, introduced coeducation, taught modern language and literature alongside the classical curriculum, and brought to the classroom a vibrancy and intensity that powerfully shaped their students' minds," Gail Griffin, Kalamazoo College professor emerita wrote in in 2013.
The Stones were at the helm when
Kalamazoo College was chartered by the state of Michigan in 1855.
"She's quite revered and her presence here is definitely still felt," said Jeff Palmer, associate director of communication at Kalamazoo College. "She and her husband are considered the mother and father of the college in many ways."
Two new endowed chairs have been named after the Stones as part of the current $125 million capital campaign, Palmer said. Other tributes range from bells in Stetson Chapel named after the couple, the Stone Room in the Hicks Student Center and the Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Prize, which is awarded annually to a student for scholarship in women's studies,
However, the Baptist administrators of the college became
critical of the Stones, expressing their disapproval of the focus on
coeducation and accusing James Stone of mismanaging funds. (They also objected to Lucinda Stone teaching the poetry of Lord Byron.)
The trustees heard a call for new leadership in November 1863 and the couple resigned the next day. Student reaction was notable: Between 60 to 75 percent of the student body withdrew, Griffin wrote.
"Harassed and hindered and trammeled in my work, the time finally came when I felt that I could never, there, realize my ideal of what teaching should be—more—I could not retain my own self-respect and my position at the College," Griffin quotes Lucinda Stone as writing.
Lucinda Stone began teaching out of her home -- until it burned down in 1866 -- and went on to work for social reform and women's organizations throughout Michigan.
"Her life's work was recognized in 1890, when the University of Michigan bestowed upon Lucinda their first honorary doctorate to a woman," Upton said. "She lived to watch her very own pupil, Madelon Stockwell, become the first woman to be granted admission to the University of Michigan, and watched as Kalamazoo College granted its first academic degree to a female student. The legacy of her work for women and education remains evident today."
Stone also was a charter member of the Ladies Library Association, which began in 1852 as a weekly gathering for literary discussions in her home. It is the oldest women's club in Michigan and the third-oldest in the U.S., according to the Kalamazoo Public Library. It also was the first women's organization to build a clubhouse. The Ladies Library Association building recently completed a $2.1 million renovation last fall.
She also organized the People's Church of Kalamazoo, the Michigan Federation of Women's Clubs and the Women's Press Association. Susan B. Anthony dubbed her the "Mother of Women's Clubs in Michigan."
In addition to Anthony, Stone was friends with suffragists and
abolitionists including Helen and Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown Blackwell and the Grimké sisters. She also visited Sojourner Truth in her Battle Creek home, Palmer said.
"Lucinda Hinsdale Stone represents the strength that we all hope to have in the face of oppression and inequality," Upton said. "Her lasting impacts have motivated women for generations and her name lives on in Michigan lore as one of the finest Americans to stand up for what they believe in."