“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” – Confucius

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

15 September

In 1840 Lucretia Mott and her husband traveled to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Aboard the ship they met, and made instant friends with, a newly-married couple, Henry and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were also on their way to the same conference as a part of their honeymoon. The two women became fast friends; they found one another’s company exhilarating, the sparks flying with delightfully prodigal abandon between their two razor-sharp minds. But once at the conference the two delegates found that they could only view the proceedings, along with the other female delegates, from behind a partition – full participation was out of the question because women were ‘constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings.’ That kind of blatant discrimination impelled Mott and Stanton to organize their own convention, the first Convention for Women’s Rights, which opened eight years later in Seneca Falls, New York.