Editing Lucy Stone (section)

=== Public speaking ===
[[File:1881 LucyStone byIdaBothe Harvard.png|thumb|upright|1881 portrait of Lucy Stone]]

In February 1846, Stone intimated to Abby Kelley Foster that she was thinking of becoming a public speaker,<ref>Million, 2003, p. 65.</ref> but not until the following summer did a storm of controversy over Foster's speaking at Oberlin decide the matter for her. Faculty opposition to Foster ignited impassioned discussion of women's rights, among the students, especially of a woman's right to speak in public, which Stone vigorously defended in a joint meeting of the men's and women's literary societies. She followed that campus demonstration by making her first public speech at Oberlin's August 1 commemoration of Emancipation in the West Indies.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 69-70.</ref>

In the fall of 1846, Stone informed her family of her intention to become a women's rights lecturer. Her brothers were, at once, supportive, and her father encouraged her to do what she considered her duty.  Her mother and her only remaining sister, however, begged her to reconsider. To her mother's fears that she would be reviled, Stone said she knew she would be disesteemed and even hated, but she must "pursue that course of conduct which, to me, appears best calculated to promote the highest good of the world."<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 73-76.</ref>

Stone, then, tried to gain practical speaking experience. Although women students could debate each other in their literary society, it was considered inappropriate for them to participate in oral exercises with men; women members of the collegiate rhetoric class were expected to learn by observing their male classmates. So, Stone and first-year student [[Antoinette Brown]], who also wanted to develop skill in public speaking, organized an off-campus women's debating club. After gaining a measure of competence, they sought and received permission to debate each other, before Stone's rhetoric class. The debate attracted a large student audience, as well as attention from the Faculty Board, which, thereupon, formally banned women's oral exercises in coeducational classes.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 80-81.</ref> Shortly thereafter, Stone accepted a challenge from a former editor of a county newspaper to a public debate on women's rights, and she soundly defeated him.<ref>Million, 2003, p. 83.</ref> She, then, submitted a petition to the Faculty Board, signed by most members of her graduating class, asking that women chosen to write graduation essays be permitted to read them, themselves, as men so honored did, instead of having them read by faculty members. When the Faculty Board refused and Stone was elected to write an essay, she declined, saying she could not support a principle that denied women "the privilege of being co-laborers with men in any sphere to which their ability makes them adequate."<ref>Million, 2003, p. 82; Hays, p. 56.</ref>

Stone received her baccalaureate degree from Oberlin College on August 25, 1847, becoming the first female college graduate from Massachusetts.