Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photography at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, discusses an 1851 daguerreotype portrait of Lucretia Coffin Mott.
Lucretia Mott, Daguerreotype Portrait: Ann Shumard, Senior Curator of Photography at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, discusses an 1851 daguerreotype portrait of Lucretia Coffin Mott. Lucretia Mott's commitment to ending slavery and securing rights for women became the defining features of her life. A devout Quaker whose activism proved unsettling to some members of her faith, Mott assumed a highly visible role in the abolitionist movement. After joining William Lloyd Garrison at the launch of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, she helped to found Philadelphia's Female Anti-Slavery Society. Her concern for women's rights was a natural outgrowth of her abolitionist efforts, and in 1848. Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, that gave birth to the women's suffrage movement.