![[OASIS]](../images/oasis/OASISshield50.gif){kind=small}
OASIS: Online Archival Search Information System
Questions or Comments Copyright Statement
|
OASIS: Online Archival Search Information System | Frames Version
Questions or Comments Copyright Statement |
© 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard College
Call No.: M-133, reels D27-28; WRC
Note: ORIGINALS CLOSED. USE MICROFILM. REQUEST AS: M-133, reels D27-28.
Repository: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute
Creator: Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1870-1920
Title: Woman's Rights Collection (WRC)
Quantity: Volumes 97-105, folder 1069
Abstract: Minutes, constitution, bylaws, etc., of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, an affiliation of the American Woman Suffrage Association. These records are part of the Woman's Rights Collection.
In 1870, within a year of forming the American Woman Suffrage Association, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, and others founded the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. MWSA was affiliated with AWSA and shared both its goals and activities. It lobbied legislatures, educated people about the benefits of woman suffrage, promoted school and later municipal woman suffrage, founded local leagues, sought male support, and worked with associations in other states.The merger, in 1890, of AWSA with the National Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), along with other changes in the suffrage movement and a need for financial stability, prompted Alice Stone Blackwell and Ellen Batelle Dietrick to write a new constitution in April 1892. The constitution was designed to enable MWSA to become a truly state-wide organization, to become less reliant on the work and support of a few leaders by developing grass-roots work and donations, and to increase its membership and voice in NAWSA. To gain the benefits of a legal existence, such as receiving bequests, MWSA incorporated in December 1892. In 1901, Massachusetts healed its own National/American split as MWSA merged with the smaller National Suffrage Association of Massachusetts. MWSA became the Massachusetts League of Women Voters in 1920. For further historical information, see Lois Bannister Merk, Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement (Ph.D. thesis, 1961), Schlesinger Library microfilm (M-19), or Sharon Strom, "Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts," Journal of American History 62 (September 1975): 296-315.
This series consists of MWSA records from its incorporation in 1892 to 1918, including minutes, constitution, by-laws, and some correspondence, clippings, and flyers. The minutes, mostly of the board of directors or executive board, include superintendent, committee, financial, and local league reports, documenting in some detail MWSA's activities, its work with such suffrage organizations as the Political Equality Union, and disagreements with both more radical suffrage groups (such as the Congressional Union) and ???Volumes 100-101 and 103-105 were dismantled for preservation purposes. Volume 101 contains a variety of unreliable page numbering systems.