MILLION, Joelle 1946(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1946; daughter of Joseph and Katherine Million. Education: Illinois College, received degree, 1968; Minnesota State University, M.A. (history).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Wilbraham, MA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Greenwood Publishing Group, 88 Post Rd. W., Box 5007, Westport, CT 06881-5007.

CAREER:

Author, educator, and historian. Minnesota State University, Mankato, former history professor.

MEMBER:

Unitarian Universalist Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Midwest Association of Graduate Schools UMI Thesis Award, 1999, for What History Demanded: Lucy Stone and the Stanton-Anthony Tradition of the Antebellum Women's Rights Movement.

WRITINGS:

Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and historian Joelle Million wrote Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement as an extension of her award-winning master's thesis from Minnesota State University. Woman's rights activist Lucy Stone was a longtime opponent of segregated education, and she devoted her life to fighting for improved conditions for women. She was the first national lecturer on the rights of women to be paid for her appearances, and the first person to organize women on a national scale to petition and then lobby for the right to vote. She traveled from her home in Massachusetts to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she trained in oratory, because they admitted women.

Million's book covers the early part of Stone's life, from her birth up to 1869, at which point the woman's suffrage movement was divided in two between Stone on one side and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the other. Louise W. Knight, in the Women's Review of Books, wrote that "the arrival of a new biography of Stone is cause for celebration; we have so much to learn about her place in history. Million's book, even more than the earlier biographies, corrects distortions in the historical record created by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's History of Woman Suffrage, which mentions Stone in passing, or, in a few cases, for her distinctly notorious exploits." Knight went on to comment, though, that the book can be confusing at times and that Million is guilty of occasionally insufficient interpretation. The critic commented that she "rarely steps back from the day-to-day story to help the reader understand the development of Stone's ideas and the broader meaning of her work," but added that "Millions' book is impressively researched," and that she "provides marvelous detail about the ups and downs of organizing, the strong bonds of affection that were built, and the pain caused by misunderstandings and disagreements" during the fight for women's rights.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Social Service Review, December, 2003, review of Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement, p. 649.

Women's Review of Books, December, 2003, Louise W. Knight, "Rediscovering Lucy Stone," p. 16.

ONLINE

Cleveland State University Web site,http://www.csuohio.edu/ (October 27, 2004), "Joelle Million."

Greenwood Publishing Group Web site,http://www.greenwood.com/ (October 27, 2004), "Joelle Million."

Illinois College Web site,http://www.ic.edu/ (September 13, 2004), "Joelle Million."

UU World,http://www.uuworld.org/ (October 27, 2004), "Joelle Million."*