Lucretia Mott
b.1793 - 1880
“The world has never seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of women the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.”
- Lucretia Mott
Lucretia was an American Quaker abolitionist, women's rights activist and social reformer. She was an important mentor to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Lucretia and Elizabeth organized the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, NY and their 1848 Declaration of Sentiments was presented there.
The Mott home in Philadelphia became an important stop along the Underground Railroad. Lucretia gave speeches and sermons and authored the Discourse on Women in 1850. She helped found Swarthmore College for women in 1864 along with other Quaker leaders. She founded the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Lucretia became a Quaker minister and preached against unequal treatment of any person, a precept of the Quaker faith. She fought against slavery for years. "An early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and his American Anti-Slavery Society, she often found herself threatened with physical violence due to her radical views." (https://www.biography.com/people/lucretia-mott-9416590, retrieved 9/21/17).
It was announced on April 20 of 2016 that several denominations of currency would be designed in homage of the women's suffrage movement. The reverse of the newly designed $10 bill will feature the images of Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession. (https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl0436.aspx)