Editing Lucy Stone (section)

== Voting rights ==
In 1870, Stone and Blackwell moved from New Jersey to [[Dorchester, Massachusetts]], which, today, is a neighborhood of Boston, just south of downtown. There, they purchased Pope's Hill, a seventeen-room house with extensive grounds and several outbuildings.<ref>Kerr, 1992, p. 159</ref> Many of the town's women had been active in the Dorchester Female Anti-Slavery Society, and, by 1870, a number of local women were suffragists.

=== New England Woman Suffrage Association ===

At her new home, Stone worked closely with the [[New England Woman Suffrage Association]] (NEWSA), the first major political organization in the U.S., with women's suffrage as its goal. Two years earlier, she had traveled to Boston to participate in its founding convention and had been elected to its executive committee.<ref>DuBois, Ellen Carol (1978), ''Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869'', [https://archive.org/details/feminismsuffrage00dubo_0/page/165 pp. 165, 168]. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. {{ISBN|0-8014-8641-6}}</ref> In 1877, she became its president and served in that position, until her death in 1893.<ref>Anthony, Susan B.; Harper, Ida Husted (1902). ''[[History of Woman Suffrage]]'', Vol. 4, [https://archive.org/stream/historyofwomansu04stanuoft#page/720/mode/2up p. 720]. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hollenbeck Press.</ref>

=== ''Woman's Journal'' ===

In 1870, Stone and Blackwell founded the ''[[Woman's Journal]]'', an eight-page weekly newspaper based in Boston. Originally intended, primarily, to voice the concerns of the NEWSA and the AWSA, by the 1880s, it had become an unofficial voice of the suffrage movement, as a whole.<ref>McMillen, 2008, pp. 208, 224</ref> Stone edited the journal for the rest of her life, assisted by her husband and their daughter, [[Alice Stone Blackwell]]. Stone did not collect a salary for her work on the paper, which required continual financial support. One of her greatest challenges was raising money to keep it going. Its circulation reached a peak of 6,000, although, in 1878, it was 2,000 less than it had been, two years earlier.<ref>McMillen, 2015, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tPCRBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA191 pp. 191–192]</ref>

After the AWSA and NWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890, the ''Woman's Journal'' became its official voice and eventually the basis for a newspaper with a much wider circulation.<ref>Fowler, Robert Booth, ''Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician'', 1986, p. 117. Boston: Northeastern University Press. {{ISBN|0-930350-86-3}}.</ref> In 1917, at a time when victory for women's suffrage was coming closer, [[Carrie Chapman Catt]], leader of the NAWSA, said, "There can be no overestimating the value to the suffrage cause of the ''Woman's Journal''... The suffrage success of today is not conceivable, without the ''Woman's Journal'''s part in it.<ref>Carrie Chapman Catt, ''Woman Citizen'', June 2, 1917, as quoted in Blackwell, 1930, p. 243.</ref>

=== "The Colorado Lesson" ===
[[File:LucyStone-sig.jpg|thumb|upright|Lucy Stone's portrait as it appeared in ''[[History of Woman Suffrage]]'', Volume II, in 1881]]
In 1877, Stone was asked by [[Rachel Foster Avery]] to come assist [[Colorado]] activists in the organization of a popular referendum campaign, with the aim of gaining suffrage for Coloradan women. Together, Stone and Blackwell worked the northern half of the state in late summer, while Susan Anthony traveled the less-promising rough-and-tumble southern half. Patchwork and scattered support was reported by activists, with some areas more receptive. Latino voters proved largely uninterested in voting reform; some of that resistance was blamed on the extreme opposition to the measure voiced by the Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado. All but a handful of politicians in Colorado ignored the measure or actively fought it. Stone concentrated on convincing Denver voters, during the October ballot, but the measure lost, heavily, with 68% voting against it. Married working men showed the greatest support, and young single men the least. Blackwell called it "The Colorado Lesson,” writing that "Woman suffrage can never be carried by a popular vote, without a political party behind it."<ref>Mead, 2004, pp. 56–59.</ref>

=== School board vote ===
In 1879, after Stone organized a petition by suffragists across the state, Massachusetts women were given strictly delimited voting rights: a woman who could prove the same qualifications as a male voter was allowed to cast her vote for members of the school board. Lucy Stone applied to the voting board in Boston but was required to sign her husband's surname as her own. She refused and never participated in that vote.<ref name=Ohio>Ohio History Central. [http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=359 ''Lucy Stone''.] Retrieved March 10, 2009.</ref>