Site of Boston Political Class Meetings

Bromley map of Boston and Roxbury, 1895.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library

Quick Facts

Location:

200 Huntington Avenue

Significance:

Site of Boston Political Class Meetings

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Building

The Boston Political Class started as a small group gathering in the 1880s under the Massachusetts branch of the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1892, it became an independently-run class with its own constitution, though often working alongside the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Founder Mrs. Henrietta R. Shattuck of Malden served as its president for many years.¹

Portrait of Mrs. Henrietta R. Shattuck, president of the Boston Political Class. (Credit: Jane Cunningham Croly, "The History of the Woman's Club Movement in America," 1898.)

The Boston Political Class held many sessions of its classes at 200 Huntington Avenue. Through these classes, women held talks about current events and parliamentary law, learned about national and international political issues, and even practiced voting in mock elections. While a predominantly White organization, sources indicate that Black women interested in civics also participated in classes.²

Footnotes:

1. Jane Cunningham Croly, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America (New York: Henry G. Allen & Co., 1898), 602-603.
2. “Among Women’s Clubs,” Boston Herald, February 15, 1903; “Boston Political Class,” Boston Herald, November 13, 1902; Croly, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, 602-603; Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2018).