Throughout the 2020 Woman Suffrage Centennial year, Stonehurst staff will be working with eighth-grade civics teachers in Waltham Public Schools to develop school curriculum that explores historically disenfranchised populations’ effective efforts to gain the right to vote through a close look at local and regional activists in the woman suffrage and labor movements. By providing diverse historical perspectives, the “Partners in Protest: Massachusetts Working Women and Their Struggle for the Vote” program will encourage civic engagement in young people of many backgrounds who will shape the future of our democracy.

Waltham, a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, and Stonehurst, the country home of the socially-minded Paine family, are well positioned to explore intersections between suffrage and labor through cultural heritage. The Paines, along with a group of suffragists who converged on Waltham in the 1910s, helped secure civil rights for ALL women regardless of ethnicity or economic class.

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.

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.