Massachusetts
Massachusetts’s Fight for Suffrage
Women worked for over 70 years to get the vote. Divisions over race, tactics, and strategy did not stop suffrage efforts. Women kept their eyes on the prize . . . suffrage. Learn more about the fight for suffrage in Massachusetts in the timeline below, or download the timeline as a printable PDF.
Massachusetts’s Suffrage Timeline
1850
Massachusetts held its first National Woman’s Rights Convention in Worcester where abolitionists Sojourner Truth, who had escaped slavery, and Lucy Stone spoke.
1869
Lucy Stone, the first Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor’s degree, founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.*
1893
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, born into a wealthy Boston family, founded the Woman’s Era Club (WEC) to promote suffrage for Black women, and the Kansas Relief Association, which offered assistance to Black settlers seeking a new life out West. St. Pierre Ruffin also founded The Woman’s Era, the country’s first newspaper by and for Black women.
1895
Massachusetts permitted women to vote in a suffrage referendum. With only 4% of eligible women participating, voters soundly rejected suffrage (32% of men and 96% of women participating in the election voted in favor).
1909
Suffragists rallied at parks, street corners, and factory gates, reaching immigrants with Italian, Yiddish, and Arabic interpreters. In 1910, Margaret Foley made news by riding in a hot air balloon holding a Votes for Women flag high and dropping suffrage flyers to the crowd below.
1915
The Legislature passed a suffrage bill by a wide margin, and Boston suffragists held a Victory Parade before the next referendum (in which only men could vote). Half a million spectators watched 15,000 suffragists, including trade union, professional women, and many men, march through Boston’s Back Bay. Following the march, suffragists distributed 600,000 flyers, and roughly 8,000 women stood outside their local polling places on election day to generate last-minute voter support. The state’s anti-suffragists came out in force, and in a surprise rout, voters rejected the referendum.
1919
The National Woman’s Party of Boston, inspired by D.C. suffragists, burned paper snippets of President Wilson’s democracy speeches at Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common. After police arrested 19 suffragists for loitering and speaking on the Common without a permit, two women had their cases dismissed, four women paid fines, and the remaining 13 served jail sentences.
June 25, 1919
Having failed to enfranchise women through state measures, Massachusetts ratified the 19th Amendment.
* AWSA supported passage of the 15th Amendment, which gave Black men the vote.
References
“A Big Baby Always Having to be Fed and Never Growing Up”: Lucy Stone and the Woman’s Journal. (2019, August). Massachusetts Historical Society. https://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month/objects/august-2019
Cooney, Robert. (2005). Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement. American Graphic Press.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. (2023, January 16). National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/josephine-st-pierre-ruffin.htm
“Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin.” The New York Historical, 2026. https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/fighting-for-equality/josephine-st-pierre-ruffin/
Lucy Stone. (2024, September 16). National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/lucy-stone.htm
Margaret Foley. (2023, January 17). National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/margaret-foley.htm
Massachusetts and the 19th Amendment. (2020, July 17). National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/massachusetts-and-the-19th-amendment.htm
Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Victory Parade: Instructions for Marchers. (n.d.). Massachusetts Historical Society. https://www.masshist.org/database/1892
Michals, D. (2015). Sojourner Truth. National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth
The Parkman Bandstand. (n.d.). Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. https://www.bwht.org/explore/the-parkman-bandstand/
Timeline of Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts. (n.d.). Primary Research. https://primaryresearch.org/woman-suffrage-in-massachusetts/
Woods, K. (n.d.). Anti-Suffrage in Massachusetts. National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/anti-suffrage-in-massachusetts.htm