Site of Boston School Committee Building

Bromley map of Boston and Roxbury, 1895.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library

Quick Facts

Location:

Mason Street

Significance:

Site of Boston School Committee Buildings

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Building

Massachusetts women sought access to school committees as part of their early quest for voting rights. In the early 1870s, the New England Woman’s Club advocated for women to hold seats on the Boston School Committee. As a result, voters elected four Boston women to the city’s school committee in 1874.¹

Boston School Committee Meeting, ca. 1858–1928. (Credit: Boston Public Library.)

Taking advantage of the traditional understanding that women held responsibility for the upbringing of children, some Massachusetts suffragists argued that women should have some decision-making powers when it came to education in schools. The New England Woman’s Club served as one of the largest supporters of the school committee suffrage movement, petitioning for women's right to vote for those who served on school committees. Their efforts proved successful; in April 1879, the Massachusetts Legislature voted to make women eligible to vote in school committees.²

Massachusetts suffragists considered school committee suffrage as their first step to obtaining full suffrage.

Footnotes:

1. “Historical Sketch of the New England Women’s Club,” Disassembled scrapbook, 1857-1919, Records of the New England Women's Club, 1843-1970, MC 178; M-145, Folio box 2, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://id.lib.harvard.edu/ead/c/sch00102c00012/catalog; Barbara Berenson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2018), 73-74.
2. Berenson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement, 73-74.