contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized." After this period, Anthony focused her energy on abolitionist and women's rights activities. Teachers' conventions When Anthony tried to speak at the New York State Teachers' Association meeting in 1853, her attempt sparked a half-hour debate among the men about whether it was proper for women to speak in public. Finally allowed to continue, Anthony said, "Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman." At the 1857 teacher's convention, she introduced a resolution calling for the admission of black people to public schools and colleges, but it was rejected as "not a proper subject for discussion". When she introduced another resolution calling for males and females to be educated together at all levels, including colleges, it was fiercely opposed and decisively rejected. One opponent called the idea "a vast social evil... the first step in the school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind this picture I see a monster of social deformity." Anthony continued to speak at state teachers' conventions for several years, insisting that women teachers should receive equal pay with men and serve as officers and committee members within the organization. Early women's rights activities Anthony's work for the women's rights movement began at a time when that movement was already gathering momentum. Stanton had helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, a local event that was the first women's rights convention. In 1850, the first in a series of National Women's Rights Conventions was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1852, Anthony attended her first National Women's Rights Convention, which was held in Syracuse, New York, where she served as one of the convention's secretaries. According to Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's authorized biographer, "Miss Anthony came away from the Syracuse convention thoroughly convinced that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all others, was the right of suffrage." Suffrage, however, did not become the main focus of her work for several more years. A major hindrance to the women's