Site of the MA Branch Office of the National Woman's Party

The office of the MA Brach of the National Woman's Party once occupied 9 Park Street.

NPS Photo/Woods

Quick Facts

Location:

9 Park Street

Significance:

Site of the MA Branch Office of the NWP

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Building

The Massachusetts Branch of the National Woman’s Party followed in line with the national organization as a group that focused on public protest. Founded by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns in 1916, the National Woman's Party (NWP) is considered the most militant faction of the suffrage movement in the United States. These suffragists believed in protesting and picketing for a suffrage amendment to the Constitution, willing to be arrested and imprisoned for the cause.

Mother-daughter duo Agnes Morey and Katharine Morey led the Massachusetts branch of the National Woman's Party. Although this branch held numerous public events and demonstrations in Boston, it most notably protested President Wilson when he visited the city in February 1919. Carrying flags and banners, 22 NWP members marched from the state headquarters on Park Street to the front entrance of the State House on Beacon Street on the morning of February 23. Before President Wilson arrived, police arrested the suffragists for loitering. By the end of the day, officers arrested three more suffragists at a corresponding demonstration on Boston Common.

To learn more about what happened to the arrested suffragists, please visit “Pemberton Square Courthouse.”

Source:

James J. Kenneally, “ ‘I Want to Go to Jail’: The Woman’s Party Reception for President Wilson in Boston, 1919,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 45, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 103-134.