When the question of slavery came into prominence, Lucy Stone quickly took her position as a friend of the slave. She taught in a school for colored people, which was established at Oberlin, and her first public speech was made in their behalf. Though severely criticized for her public speaking and obliged to bear unpleasant comment because of it, she never swerved from her idea of what she believed to be right. Soon she was engaged by the Anti-Slavery Society, in which William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were officers, to lecture for their cause, and while doing so, traveled over the greater part of the United States, speaking both for woman suffrage and for the abolition of slavery. But the rights of woman stood first in the heart of Lucy Stone. As a child, she had seen her mother overruled by a stern husband, who never allowed her an opinion contrary to his will, nor a penny to use without his sanction. It may have been because of this early object lesson that Lucy Stone made up her mind never to marry; or because she thought that she could carry on her work for the advancement of women better by being entirely free. Nevertheless, she did consent to marry Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, a merchant of Cincinnati, Ohio, who overcame her objections by sharing all her views on suffrage and slavery, and they were married by Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, May 1, 1855. Before their marriage Mr. Blackwell and Lucy signed a protest which read: We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership and so recognized by law. This protest was the beginning of much serious thought about the rights of man and woman as individuals, and led the way to improved laws. In most states, to-day, a married woman may own her own property and may will a part of it away from her husband, if she wishes to; she may live an individual life, also, and control equally with her husband the education of their children. Lucy Stone retained her maiden name, never adopting that of her husband. Their married life proved to be remarkably happy, one child, a daughter, being born to them. Mrs. Stone helped to organize the American Equal Rights Association, which grew into the American Woman Suffrage Association. William Lloyd Garrison, George William Curtis, Colonel Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, and other prominent people joined in the work with her. She served as President of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and even studied law that she might learn how to correct legal injustice to women. In 1877, Mrs. Stone and Mr. Blackwell went to Colorado to assist in the Woman Suffrage movement in that state. Sixteen years later the constitutional amendment granting the suffrage to woman was carried by popular vote, and women were given "exactly the same rights as men in exercising the elective franchise."