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"All men are created equal" is a concept central to American democracy.
The great-great-grandfather of Ethel Paine of Waltham was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. She supported equal rights for women, workers and African-Americans. Library of Congress.
Brave suffragists were the first to protest in front of the White House.
Library of Congress
In Ancient History class with Josephine Hall, students learn about the long history of democracy.
Library of Congress.
African-American women have an especially difficult battle.
Waltham’s Emma Jennings, a formerly enslaved woman who worked for a family of suffragists, left no record of her own thoughts on voting rights. The Crisis, May 1916.
Some women suffragists stooped to low levels to convince men in power that women are worthy of this basic right of U.S. citizenship.
“They Alone Cannot Vote. Imbeciles, children, women, criminals. These are the disenfranchised.” — Women’s Journal, March 13, 1915. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Young working women and college women found common ground at this important mass meeting organized by teacher Ida Hall.
“A mass meeting 140 years ago had founded a great nation but had left great injustices and inequalities.” — Ida Hall (shown wearing a necktie). Boston Herald, April 17, 1901