The 19th Amendment of the US Constitution of 1920 guarantees and protects women’s constitutional right to vote. It took a great army of women nearly a century to win that right.

In the decades leading up to 1920, activists in the industrial city of Waltham, Massachusetts, helped build that female army. Their focus on the rights of working women was especially appropriate for Waltham, a city of workers and center of the Industrial Revolution.

The SUFFRAGISTS

Meet local activists from the first generation of college-educated women who joined forces with factory workers for a common cause…. (Click on each photo for a detailed biography.)

STUDENTS

Over a period of decades, Waltham teachers Ida and Josephine Hall taught students from Boston and Waltham about their rights as American citizens. Some students became active in government, politics and trade unions.

PRO-SUFFRAGE ALLIES

Waltham’s most active suffragists—Hall, Acton, Ryan and Luscomb—found allies in women who gave their support behind the scenes at a time when it was still unacceptable for women to have a public voice.

Anti-suffragist

A Waltham anti-suffragist briefly led the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association, the oldest and strongest of its kind in the country.

MAP

Sites associated with the Waltham suffragists are marked in yellow pins on this map. Click on the pin for addresses and more information….

Banner image: Waltham Historical Society. Title image: Library of Congress.

“Anxious to Vote: Students, Workers and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage” is a curriculum and public education project developed in partnership by Stonehurst the Robert Treat Paine Estate and Waltham Public Schools in commemoration of the national suffrage centennial in 2020. STONEHURST is a National Historic Landmark owned by the City of Waltham. The once-private estate of generous social justice advocates whose ancestors helped establish the democratic foundations of this country is now appropriately owned by the people.

The Friends of Stonehurst received support for this program through “The Vote: A Statewide Conversation about Voting Rights,” a special initiative of Mass Humanities that includes organizations around the state. Our team includes Waltham History Department Chair Derek Vandegrift; Stonehurst Curator Ann Clifford; Kenneth Borter and the Waltham 8th-grade civics team; and consulting scholars Kathleen Banks Nutter, Barbara Berenson and Allison Horrocks.

This program is funded in part by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.