A family of common zeal
Of the many items in a new Radcliffe exhibit devoted to a family of social reformers, one in particular points to the attitudes and assumptions they repeatedly overcame. It’s a brief, age-weathered letter from November 1869, in which Charles Darwin thanks the author and activist Antoinette Brown Blackwell for sending him a copy of her recently published book “Studies in General Science.” The note begins “Dear Sir.” By then, Brown Blackwell was likely unfazed by the mix-up. In 1850, when Oberlin College refused to grant her a theological degree, she persevered to become, two years later, the first woman ordained as a Protestant minister in the United States. She went on to a career as a writer for The New York Herald Tribune, and became an outspoken women’s rights advocate and abolitionist. She also gave birth to five daughters, despite strong encouragement from a friend to draw the line at two. “Not another baby...