CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge in1810. By her late teens, she was considered a prodigy and equal or superior in intelligence to her male friends. As an adult she hosted “Conversations” for men and women on topics that ranged from women’s rights to philosophy. She joined Ralph Waldo Emerson in editing and writing for the Transcendentalist journal, The Dial from 1840-1842. It was in this publication that she wrote an article about women’s rights titled, “The Great Lawsuit,” which she would go on to expand into a book a few years later. In 1844, she moved to NYC to write for the New York Tribune. Her book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published in1845. She traveled to Europe as the Tribune’s foreign correspondent, the first woman to hold such a role. She died in a shipwreck off the coast of NY in July 1850 just as she was returning to life in the U.S. Her husband and infant also perished. It was hoped that she would be a leader in the equal rights and suffrage movements but her life was tragically cut short. 02 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. Harriet A. Jacobs (1813-1897) was born into slavery in Edenton, NC. She escaped her sexually abusive owner in 1835 and lived in hiding for seven years. In 1842 she escaped to the north. She eventually was able to secure freedom for her children and herself. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, was published in 1861 and brought her fame. During the Civil War, Jacobs met with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Women’s National Loyal League and was elected to its executive committee. She and her daughter Louisa M. Jacobs (1833-1917), worked to care for and educate black refugees and orphans in Alexandria and Savannah. Louisa briefly lectured on suffrage for the American Equal Rights Association. Stanton and Anthony left out the contributions of both Harriet and Louisa in their published history of the woman suffrage movement. Harriet worked briefly in Boston as clerk for the newly formed New England Women’s Club. She lived in Cambridge from1869-1877. Here she operated a boarding house, first at 10 Trowbridge Street and then her home at the corner of Mt. Auburn and Story streets. 03 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. 1848 1850 1866-1869 1869 1879 st st 1 Woman’s 1 National Suffrage American Partial Suffrage Rights Woman’s Rights Schism Woman Achieved (for Convention Convention Suffrage Assoc. School Committee) The first national In the years following the Led by Lucy Stone and The first Woman’s Civil War, the close based in Boston, the The Mass. legislature passed a Rights Convention gathering for women’s law allowing women to vote in rights took place in affiliation between the AWSA was formed. took place in Seneca anti-slavery and women’s Unlike the NWSA, school committee elections. Falls, N.Y. Worcester, Mass. rights movements began AWSA supported the This was only a starting point Margaret Fuller was to show stress. Reformers const. amendments but helped build political remembered there. were split about the best granting suffrage to participation by women. Sarah Annual conventions approach: suffrage for Black men while also Sprague Jacobs and Phebe were held throughout Black men first, or pushing ahead for Mitchell Kendall were first women elected in Cambridge. the 1850s. universal suffrage. Woman Suffrage. 04 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. “Women Depositing Their Ballots at the Police Court Polls” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Dec. 20, 1879 These early women voters for the Cambridge School Committee are shown here taking their new civic duty seriously despite being badgered by male canvassers. 05 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. Phebe Mitchell Kendall (1828-1907) and Sarah Sprague Jacobs (1813- 1902) were elected to the Cambridge School Committee in 1879. Phebe Mitchell Kendall, pictured left, writer and biographer of her sister, astronomer Maria Mitchell. Kendall served on the School Committee for fourteen years. Sarah Jacobs transcribed, edited, and published 17th century Cambridge records. These resources continue to assist historians today. Credit: Maria Mitchell Association 06 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. 1895 1900 1900-1901 1914-1915 1919-1920 Woman’s Era Mass. Suffrage College Equal Mass. Suffrage Nineteenth Club Faces Amendment Referendum Suffrage League Discrimination Amendment Radcliffe alumnae, African American suffragist The Legislature proposed This non-binding Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin an amendment to the The Constitutional Amend. referendum on municipal Maud Wood Park and formed the Woman’s Era state constitution for full passed Congress 4 June 1919 election suffrage failed. Inez Haynes Irwin Club in 1893 and The enfranchisement of and was ratified by states and signed into law 26 August Women already registered founded the College Woman’s Era newspaper women. Male voters in 1895. The Cantabrigia defeated the 1920. to vote in School Equal Suffrage League and were instrumental Club and the Mass. Fed’n amendment. (As part of Committee elections were protested when Ruffin was the advocacy effort, the Over 1,000 Cambridge women allowed to vote on the in getting younger excluded at the national Cambridge Suffrage HQ registered to vote in a single measure but they were women to support meeting of the General opened on Hampshire St. week. A mock election was conducted at City Hall prior to vastly outnumbered. suffrage. Federation Women’s Clubs then relocated to Central in 1900. Square.) the official vote. 07 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. 1886 1896 1900 1914 1915 Cambridge Cambridge College Equal Garnet Equal Cambridge Equal Woman’s Political Equality Suffrage League Suffrage Club Suffrage Club Suffrage League Association A suffrage organization for African American men Founded by Cora Scott Founded by Grace A. Started by Radcliffe and women in Cambridge Founded in 1915 by Pond in 1886, with Johnson in 1896. alumnae in 1900, this and West Somerville. Its president Mary Ware Allen. honorary president Col. Merged with the CWSL organization grew to president, Mary E. Duhart, Held public meetings to T. W. Higginson. Merged lived at 48 Mt. Pleasant publicize the suffrage in 1909. include chapters in 30 with the CPEA in 1909. states across the country. St., Cambridge. amendment on the 1915 Educator Maria ballot. Hosted a reception (Named after Sarah J. Baldwin is mentioned here for Lucy Stone in Garnet, who founded the as an honorary vice 1893. Equal Suffrage League in president in 1915. NY. ) 08 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. Men were suffragists too! Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) was one of many prominent male supporters of woman suffrage. He was a Unitarian minister, ardent abolitionist, and colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment in the Civil War. Higginson continued to be an activist after the Civil War. He was a founding member of the American Woman Suffrage Association and an editor of the Woman’s Journal. Higginson was appointed the Honorary President of the Cambridge Woman’s Suffrage League, founded in 1886. Note: The Harvard Men’s League for Woman Suffrage was established in 1911 by six students. The League hosted several important speakers in Cambridge including Emmeline Pankhurst, a famous English suffragette. Harvard College would not allow her to speak on campus, so the League rented out Brattle Hall for the standing room only event. 09 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. Margaret West Norton Campbell was born in Maine in 1827. She married John B. Campbell and they had three children. Margaret became interested in the woman suffrage movement after reading the proceedings of the first National Woman’s Rights Convention. The couple led an itinerant life passing back and fourth between New England, Iowa, and Illinois. She worked for the Mass. Woman Suffrage Association and then the American Woman Suffrage Association. She spent most of the 1870s and 1880s lecturing in the western states in support of state suffrage campaigns. She corresponded with Lucy Stone about her progress. For a brief time, Margaret and John lived in North Cambridge on Cambridge Chronicle, 22 Feb. 1879 Lambert Avenue. The Cambridge newspapers reported on her local lectures and her extensive travels. Margaret W. Campbell died in Joliet, Illinois in 1908. 010 SARAH BURKS, CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL COMMISSION December 2019 CAMBRIDGE SUFFRAGE HISTORY A long march for suffrage. Maria Louise Baldwin was born in Cambridge in 1856. She graduated from Cambridge High School in 1874 and the Cambridge Teachers’ Training School the following year. Though not initially offered a job in Cambridge, she was hired in 1882 as a teacher at the Agassiz Grammar School on Sacramento Street. Seven years later, she was appointed principal, the first black woman to be appointed as a school principal in Massachusetts. In 1916, when a new, larger building was built, she was appointed master of the school--also a first. She worked with Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Florida Ruffin Ridley to found the Woman’s Era Club, a Black woman’s club in Boston that also published the Woman’s Era journal. She was a member of the Cantabrigia Club.