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House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: October 15, 2018 03:15 PM
From: Representative Margo L. Davidson
To: All House members
Subject: Resolution – Commemorating the life of Lucretia Mott
 
In this election season, I would like to pay special tribute to the memory of Lucretia Mott, who was a 19th Century feminist activist, abolitionist, social reformer and pacifist who helped launch the women’s rights movement, including fighting for women to have the right to vote.

Born in 1793 as Lucretia Coffin, and raised in a Quaker family, Lucretia Mott’s father sent her to a Quaker Friend’s boarding school where, at age 15 she became an assistant and later a teacher. Here, her interest in women’s rights began, as she was paid only half the salary of male teachers.
After marrying fellow teacher James Mott in 1811, she moved to Philadelphia and, some seven years later, began to speak at religious meetings, and three years later she became a minister of the Friends. In the 1820s, Mott traveled the country lecturing on religion and social reform, including temperance, the abolition of slavery, and peace. In 1848, taking up the cause of women’s rights, Lucretia Mott and an associate called a “first of its kind” convention “to discuss social, civil, and religious rights of women.” Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, the convention issued a “Declaration of Sentiments”, which stated that “all men and women are created equal”, and from that time Lucretia Mott devoted most of her attention to the women’s rights movement. She lectured widely and was elected president of the 1852 convention.

Although she did not live to see the day women won the right to vote under the 19th Amendment, Lucretia Mott is credited with igniting the women’s rights movement. Mott tirelessly pushed for equal voting, education and economic rights for all who were disadvantaged and disenfranchised. American author Susan Jacoby wrote: “When Mott died in 1880, she was widely judged by her contemporaries…as the greatest American woman of the nineteenth century.”

Please join with me in commemorating the life of this incredible woman of the 19th Century, who helped blaze trails for women, minorities, and others that revolutionized this nation for the better.

If you have any questions please contact whaigood@pahouse.net.



Introduced as HR1176