Last updated: December 9, 2024
Person
Maud Wood Park
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Bain News Service Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
Women’s suffrage advocate Maud Wood Park helped shepherd the 19th Amendment through Congress through her successful "Front Door Lobby."
Born in 1871, Maud Wood grew up in Boston. She attended the Saint Agnes School in Albany, New York, and graduated in 1887. After teaching for eight years, she returned to school, enrolling in Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wood obtained her degree in 1898. During her time there, she met Boston architect Charles Edward Park whom she soon married.1
While a student at Radcliffe, Park found her calling as an advocate for women’s suffrage. One of only two suffragists at the school, she and her colleague Inez Gilmore organized the first suffrage meeting there. They invited Alice Stone Blackwell to speak and "stood out in the rain collaring people to fill the hall." According to Park, Blackwell:
looked so little and gentle that my heart sank; I thought the speech would be a fizzle...Instead that gentle little woman delivered such a fiery speech that Inez and I devoted ourselves to the cause thereafter.2
Inspired by Blackwell’s speech, Park soon founded the first College Equal Suffrage League to energize the next generation of women activists. She said:
Its object is to bring the question of equal suffrage to college women, to help them realize their debt to the women who have worked so hard for us, and to make them understand that one of the ways to pay that debt is to fight in the battle in the quarter of the field in which it is still unwon; in short, to make them feel the obligation of opportunity.3
Park toured colleges nationwide to garner support and establish more chapters of the College Equal Suffrage League, which became a national organization in 1908.
In addition to her work with the College Equal Suffrage League, Park cofounded the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government in 1901. Serving as its Executive Secretary for twelve years, Park helped this new organization build membership, organize meetings, and direct initiatives.4
In 1909, Boston suffragist Pauline Agassiz Shaw sponsored Park as she took a two-year tour of the world to learn about the conditions of women globally. Her stops spanned the globe, including Japan, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, and Turkey. Upon her return, Park shared what she learned with public audiences across the United States.5
In preparation for the 1915 state suffrage referendum, Park spoke across Massachusetts urging voters to pass universal suffrage in the state. Despite the work of Park and others, voters overwhelmingly defeated the measure. She later wrote of the 1915 defeat:
previous experience had shown that defeats were only temporary, whereas gains were likely to be permanent. In 1915, suffrage workers needed the comfort to be derived from that conclusion, for during that year, there were no victories, and state constitutional amendments for woman suffrage were defeated in four eastern states.6
Undeterred by the loss, Park and her colleagues gathered in Faneuil Hall and vowed to continue the fight and focus on the national campaign for a women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution.7
As part of this national movement for the woman’s suffrage amendment, and at the invitation of Carrie Chapman Catt, Park became the head of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association based in Washington, D.C. She led the "Front Door Lobby," which she described as:
the half humorous, half-kindly name given to our Congressional Committee in Washington by one of the press-gallery men there, because, as he explained, we never used backstairs methods.8
Known as "the lady who made lobbying respectable," Park used her deep understanding of the legislative process and nurtured allies in Congress to pave the way for the passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution in 1920.9
According to one account:
She was respected and admired by all whether in sympathy with her cause or not. Many Congressmen attribute their conversion to the dignified, thorough, and intelligent way in which Mrs. Park followed the course of the Amendment in its perilous journey through Congress.10
Reflecting back years later, Park said that the passage of the 19th amendment led to “happier personal lives for women and the betterment of the world.”11
Following the passage of the 19th Amendment, Park became president of the National League of Women Voters and chair of its legislative committee. As the leader of the organization, she said:
The League’s purpose is to develop women citizens into intelligent and self-directing voters and to turn their votes toward constructive social ends; to foster education in citizenship; to promote forums and public discussions of civic reforms; and to support needed legislation.12
After four years at the helm of the National League of Women Voters, Park organized the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee. Through this lobbying organization, Park led efforts to secure federal funding for maternity, children’s health, and social welfare initiatives.13
By the end of the 1920s, however, Park largely retired from public life because of health concerns. She retired to Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where she pursued a quieter life of writing. Among other works, she wrote a play about women’s rights pioneer Lucy Stone, and Front Door Lobby, a book about her time working for the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association.14
In her final years, Park returned to Massachusetts and worked to advance medical education for women as a member of the New England Hospital in Roxbury. She also served as a member of the Planned Parenthood League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and other charitable and advocacy organizations.15
She passed away at age 84 in 1955 in Melrose, Massachusetts, after a long life dedicated to women’s rights and equality. As she once said:
What I want for women is that they shall be free from artificial restrictions, free to choose the career for which they are best fitted...I think the question of so-called ‘careers’ is a purely personal one. There are no rules applicable to the problem of whether a woman can have both a ‘career’ and a home. It all depends on the woman. The important thing is that she shall have absolute freedom of choice.16
Footnotes:
- "Maud Wood Park," Britannica Encyclopaedia Online, accessed December 2024.
- "Famous Suffragist Says “E” Still Challenge to Women," Boston Globe, April 27, 1939.
- "The Founding of the First College League," Women’s Journal and Suffrage News vol. 45, no. 17 (April 25, 1914).
- "Maud Wood Park," Britannica Encyclopaedia Online. Accessed December 2024; Radcliffe College, "I. Executive Positions, Maud Wood Park (Mrs. Charles E. Park)," in Half a Hundred Radcliffe Women: What They Have Given to the World, 2, accessed November 13, 2024.
- "Maud Wood Park Correspondence, Speeches, and Other Documents." In Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Series 1: Woman's Suffrage; Series XI. Edna Lamphrey Stantial, Papers, 1893-1944, 1905; Sharon Hartman Strom, "Park, Maud Wood," in Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University, 519-522.
- Maud Wood Park, Front Door Lobby, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), 8.
- "A rash and dreadful act for a woman": The 1915 Woman Suffrage Parade in Boston," Object of the Month, Massachusetts Historical Society, July 2010, accessed November 2024; "Bay State Starts Again," The Woman’s Journal, November 13, 1915.
- Park, Front Door Lobby, 1.
- "Mrs. Maud Wood Park," Portland Press Herald, May 11, 1955; "Maud Wood Park, American Suffragist," Turning Point Suffragist Memorial, accessed December 2024.
- "I. Executive Positions, Maud Wood Park (Mrs. Charles E. Park)," in Half a Hundred Radcliffe Women: What They Have Given to the World, 2, accessed November 13, 2024.
- "Maud Park Devoted Life to Woman Suffrage Cause," Boston Globe, May 10, 1955.
- "No Separate Woman’s Party Says Mrs. Park," The Hutchison Blade, February 18, 1922.
- "Maud Wood Park, American Suffragist," Turning Point Suffragist Memorial, accessed December 2024.
- "Maud Wood Park," Britannica Encyclopaedia Online, accessed December 2024.
- "Maud W. Park Rites Monday," Boston Herald, May 10, 1955.
- Catherine I. Hackett, "The Lady Who Made Lobbying Respectable," The Woman Citizen, April 19, 1924.