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Editor's Introduction: The year 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women's suffrage. It stated simply, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Historically, Massachusetts played a key role in the struggle for women 's rights. As early as the 1830s and 1840s, abolitionists such as Lydia Maria Child, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, Sarah Parker Redmond, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke broke social norms to speak in public about the evils of slavery. The first truly national women's rights convention was held in Worcester in 1850. After the Civil War, suffragists intensified their campaign, which had been on hold during the war years. In 1866 a group of activists gathered in Boston for the organizing meeting of the American Equal Rights Association. Just three years later, however, the organization split over the issue of whether to support the 14th and 15th Amendments, which provided voting rights for African American men but not for women.
In Massachusetts, leaders of the American Women's Suffrage Association (AWSA) branch fully supported African American rights; they eventually formed the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. They were initially confident that the state's strong abolitionist heritage and Republican-dominated politics would easily lead the legislature to enfranchise women. In 1869 Lucy Stone persuaded the legislature to create a "Joint Special Committee on Woman Suffrage." That year the House of Representatives voted on allowing women the right to vote in municipal elections; to suffragists' great dismay, it was defeated 66%-34% .This would be the first of many defeats. Suffrage in Massachusetts would prove far more challenging to attain than the first generation of women's rights activists ever imagined.1
The fight to serve on school boards was another post-war priority. The first petition to the legislature was presented in 1866. It succeeded in some towns where a handful of women were slowly elected to school boards, even though they had no right to vote in these elections. In 1874 Boston elected three women to its school committee. In 1879 activists won and the state legislature passed...