"Women Take the Ballot Seriously": Boston Women in the 1920 Election

While celebrating the ratification of the 19^th Amendment with a crowd of supporters at Faneuil Hall, suffragist Alice Stone Blackwell spoke to women’s responsibility with the ballot. She argued women must effectively use their new-found power:

Now that we have the vote, what are we going to do with it? Let us remember that the ballot is neither a plaything nor an ornament, but a tool and a weapon. It is a tool which, rightly used, can do almost anything.^[1]

Some doubted women's ability to successfully navigate politics and voting. Despite these skeptics, women of all backgrounds showed they would join the voting population as conscientious and informed participants. The women of greater Boston responded to their new status as full voting citizens by educating themselves, registering to vote, and voting in their first federal election on November 2, 1920.

Citizenship Education

Before many women registered in elections, they learned about the workings of the government. Women’s groups had been holding political or government classes for women since the 1880s. Started originally as a small group gathering of women in the Massachusetts branch of the National Woman Suffrage Association, the Boston Political Class became an independent organization with a constitution in 1892. Through classes, women from across greater Boston held discussions, learned about political issues, and even practiced voting in mock elections.^[2]

The availability of these types of classes only grew as the victory of women’s suffrage drew nearer. After Massachusetts ratified the 19^th Amendment in June 1919, the city and state suffrage organizations, the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government and the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, transitioned into the Boston League of Women Voters and the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. Both organizations started to focus on voter and citizenship education to prepare women as new voters in state and federal elections.^[3]

In Boston, the Boston League of Women Voters had two goals: educational work "to raise the standard of citizenship" and political work "to promote good government."^[4] The organization engaged women across communities to ensure as many women as possible had access to their meetings and classes:

Women of every kind and condition are being reached, for the audiences addressed include neighborhood circles, mothers’ clubs, school centers, federated clubs, churches, settlement classes, and miscellaneous organizations of women. Several of the most alert groups are among the colored women.^[5]

The League sponsored a six-lecture series for women on political topics. These included: the history of the founding of the nation and the three branches of federal government; the Massachusetts state government; citizenship and naturalization; political parties; city government; and understanding political language.^[6] The League also held events, including mock elections that allowed women to practice the voting process before election day.^[7] One of the League’s most successful events, "Citizenship Day" at Boston City Hall, allowed women to learn about the workings of city government. Representatives from various departments, including the City Registry and Election Department and Parks and Recreation, spoke to participants. Newspapers declared Citizenship Day a success, as the Christian Science Monitor noted, "Women...are apparently awakening to the fundamental need, not of playing politics, but of taking part in government."^[8]

Non-partisan in nature, the Boston League of Women Voters provided women with a foundational knowledge of the workings of government and politics, which allowed them to make their own decisions and fulfill their role as informed citizens.

Registering to Vote

Some Massachusetts women had registered to vote before 1920, due to women winning voting rights in School Committee elections in 1879. In preparation of the 19^th Amendment, city and state officials encouraged women to register to vote in these voting registries. Those who registered to vote in School Committee elections automatically became registered in state and federal elections. However, only a small population of women registered and voted in School Committee elections, which meant thousands of women had to register in the months leading to the 1920 federal election.

After Tennessee ratified the 19^th Amendment, reaching the ¾ state-ratification benchmark, election officials expected women to immediately head to government buildings to register. However, only a little over 3,000 women registered on August 19, the day after Tennessee’s ratification.^[9] Newspapers commented that suffragists were too busy celebrating their victory to register. Perhaps a more likely reason may be that women did not know a recent Massachusetts law allowed women to start registering before the Amendment became certified in Washington D.C. on August 26.^[10]

In her victory speech, state suffrage leader Mrs. Charles Sumner Bird rallied women to register: "The ratification of the Susan B. Anthony amendment imposes upon the women the duty as well as the privilege of voting in the fall election. The first step is to register."^[11] Although they only had a few weeks to register before the Massachusetts primary election in September, numerous women flocked to their voter registration sites. Mothers and daughters registered together, while younger mothers waited in line with their infant children. Some husbands and fathers even assisted their wives and daughters in the process. In following with election procedure, city officials had to turn away those who did not pass the literacy test of reading selections of the Massachusetts Constitution.^[12]

Since Massachusetts’ state primary occurred on September 7, only about 31,500 Boston women registered in time. This almost doubled the number of women voters, since approximately 17,000 women had previously registered for School Committee elections.^[13] In the months between the state primary and the election, thousands more women registered to vote in greater Boston.^[14] The record of new registered voters shattered daily, particularly during the final days of open registration.^[15] The Mayor of Boston ordered registration locations to stay open past 10 p.m. "because of the large number of people desiring to register." The city also hired more election officials to help register new voters.^[16]

On October 12, city officials added approximately 8,000 women to the voter rolls, with 2,000 alone registering at City Hall.^[17] For the last day of voter registration, October 13, officials estimated 10,000 women registered. Recognizing many women still waited in line to register on the final day, Mayor Peters tried to keep registration sites open past the 10 p.m. deadline. However, the election commission chairman M.W. Burlen stated: "The law requires us to close registration at 10 P.M. promptly. But there was no need of these people waiting until the last minute to register."^[18] Accounts suggest city officials turned away thousands of women who had arrived too late, even if they had been waiting in line for hours.^[19]

When voter registration closed, more than 70,000 women had registered across City Hall and the 36 neighborhood registration locations.^[20] This more than doubled the registration of Boston’s women voters for the state primary. Women’s drive to register also led to an increase of voting registration among men; Boston had close to 200,000 registered voters for the 1920 election.^[21]

Learn more about Boston women's experiences registering to vote.

"How Will the Women Vote?"

As soon as the ratification of the 19^th Amendment became official, members of both state parties began to appeal to new women voters.^[22] Parties led campaign schools, made short movies, and had women party members write and speak to women, courting the new voters to their party. The Republican Party even designed "pretty campaign flyers" because "a woman likes something pretty, something that is worth taking home."^[23] The regional director for the Republican women of the Eastern Division, Mrs. Arthur Livermore, spoke of the party's goal to reach women and help women see the significance of their responsibility to vote:

We have to make each individual woman realize her responsibility, realize that it is she on whom the election hangs. If she stays away from the polls, if she doesn’t do all that in her lies, to get her men to go, then the election is lost. For it is always and ever the individual who counts.^[24]

While some feared women's influence on the voting, others applauded women's entrance into the voting pool. An editorial in the Boston Globe gave one of the most supportive forecasts of women’s influence in the vote:

If she votes with her husband, before he knows it they will both be voting her way. Soon or late the influence of mothers, wives, and daughters will be a powerful force on all political questions that come near the heart and thought of women and touch the realities of life: home, child, school, street, cleanliness, health, factory, bread and butter.^[25]

At the close of voter registration, observers forecasted a Republican wave in Boston. Biggest gains of voter registration hailed from Republican districts, which suggested that Republicans had more success than Democrats in driving women to register. The success on the part of the Republicans "strengthened the belief among many politicians that Boston will go Republican this year."^[26]

Voting in 1920

Prepared and ready to vote, women from across Boston entered their local polling places on election day. Despite a fake flyer widely dispersed in Boston’s Black communities attempted to intimidate Black women from voting, they too came out in droves.^[27] The city election commissioners all reported that women "voted with little delay and with considerable confidence and intelligence."^[28] Chairman M.W. Burlen acknowledged:

We expected to be asked all sorts of questions concerning the way to vote, but we found that the women as a rule needed no assistance whatever. They voted with as much ease as if they had been voting all their lives.^[29]

While the mass numbers of new voters resulted in stuffed ballot boxes, long lines, election machinery crashes, and hiccups at polling locations, women successfully participated in their first federal election.

The Republican victory in Massachusetts exceeded expectations due to new women voters, the majority of whom officials guessed voted the Republican ticket.^[30] President-elect Harding carried every city, and Lieutenant Governor Channing Cox won the governorship. Most Republicans won throughout the state. Mrs. Cox, wife of the Governor-Elect, praised the outpouring of women's support:

I am immensely pleased and gratified at the manner in which the women of Massachusetts have accepted their new responsibility. I had not the slightest doubt that they would prove their loyalty and patriotism by going to the polls in large numbers. Not only are they certain to become an important factor in politics, but a helpful influence as well.^[31]

Massachusetts suffragist Alice Stone Blackwell reflected on women's first federal election:

There is one thing that the vote Tuesday showed—women are quite as sensible in their vote as in anything else. We heard so much about the evils of equal suffrage—how women would lose their manners and their morals if they voted; and how women would unite in one big party to defeat the men. Tuesday’s results showed that was not true.^[32]

While only about 20% of Massachusetts women were able to register and vote in this election, it marked a significant step in women’s voting rights.^[33] The November 1920 election proved what so many Boston women already believed—they could be competent voters and fulfill their responsibility as full citizens.

Contributed by: Kaitlin Woods, SCA Public Historian

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Footnotes

[1] “When Boston Marched,” The Woman Citizen vol. 5 (October 2, 1920).

[2] “Among Women’s Clubs,” Boston Herald, February 15, 1903; “Boston Political Class,” Boston Herald, November 13, 1902; Jane Cunningham Croly, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America (New York: Henry G. Allen & Co., 1898); 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).

[3] “Boston League of Women Voters,” The Woman Citizen vol. 4 (January 17, 1920); “Massachusetts,” The Woman Citizen vol. 5 (April 24, 1920).

[4] “Boston League of Women Voters,” The Woman Citizen vol 4. (January 17, 1920).

[5] “Boston League of Women Voters,” The Woman Citizen vol 4. (January 17, 1920).

[6] M. J. Curl, “New Women Voters are Burnishing up Their Brains,” Boston Herald, December 14, 1919.

[7] M. J. Curl, “New Women Voters are Burnishing up Their Brains,” Boston Herald, December 14, 1919.

[8] “The Boston Idea,” The Woman Citizen vol. 5 (June 26, 1920).

[9] “Women Slow to Register Here,” Boston Herald, August 20, 1920.

[10] “Women Slow to Register Here,” Boston Herald, August 20, 1920.

[11] “Women Slow to Register Here,” Boston Herald, August 20, 1920.

[12] Marjory Adams, “How Old are You, Madam,” Boston Globe, August 29, 1920; J. Kevin Corder & Christina Wolbrecht, "Did Women Vote Once they had the Opportunity?" American Bar Association (December 2, 2019). Last accessed October 2020, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publications/insights-on-law-and-society/volume-20/issue-1/did-women-vote-once-they-had-the-opportunity-/

[13] “31,517 Women to Vote in Boston,” Boston Herald, September 05, 1920; “70,112 Boston Women to Vote,” Boston Herald, October 23, 1920.

[14] “Registration Records Broken with 200,000; 10,000 Arrive Too Late,” Boston Herald, October 14, 1920.

[15] “Registration Record of City Broken when 9468 New Voters are Added,” Boston Herald, October 12, 1920; “Registration Records Broken with 200,000; 10,000 Arrive Too Late,” Boston Herald, October 14, 1920.

[16] “Registration Record of City Broken when 9468 New Voters are Added,” Boston Herald, October 12, 1920; Annual Report of the Boston Election Department for the Year 1920; J. Kevin Corder and Christina Wolbrecht, Counting Women's Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage Through the New Deal (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Meilan Solly, "What the First Women Voters Experienced When Registering for the 1920 Election," Smithsonian Magazine (July 30, 2020). Last Accessed October 2020, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-first-women-voters-experienced-when-registering-1920-election-180975435/

[17] “Registration Record of City Broken when 9468 New Voters are Added,” Boston Herald, October 12, 1920.

[18] “Registration Records Broken with 200,000; 10,000 Arrive Too Late,” Boston Herald, October 14, 1920.

[19] “Registration Records Broken with 200,000; 10,000 Arrive Too Late,” Boston Herald, October 14, 1920.

[20] “Big G.O.P. Gain in Registration,” Boston Herald, October 19, 1920; “70,112 Boston Women to Vote,” Boston Herald, October 23, 1920.

[21] “Big G.O.P. Gain in Registration,” Boston Herald, October 19, 1920; “Registration Record of City Broken when 9468 New Voters are Added,” Boston Herald, October 12, 1920; “70,112 Boston Women to Vote,” Boston Herald, October 23, 1920.

[22] Title of section comes from “How Will the Women Vote?” Boston Globe, September 5, 1920.

[23] Hildegard Hawthorne, “Pretty Campaign Flyers to Beguile Women Voters,” Boston Globe, October 17, 1920.

[24] Hildegard Hawthorne, “Pretty Campaign Flyers to Beguile Women Voters,” Boston Globe, October 17, 1920.

[25] James Morgan, “The Woman with a Ballot and What She Can Do With It,” Boston Globe, October 17, 1920.

[26] ”Big G.O.P. Gain in Registration,” Boston Herald, October 19, 1920; “70,112 Boston Women to Vote,” Boston Herald, October 23, 1920.

[27] “Fake Circular Sent to Colored Women,” Boston Globe, November 2, 1920.

[28] “Women Take to Voting Easily,” Boston Herald, September 08, 1920.

[29] “Women Take to Voting Easily” Boston Herald, September 08, 1920.

[30] John D. Merrill, “Bay State Vote Work of Women,” Boston Globe, November 4, 1920.

[31] “Not Miss Blackwell’s Most Exciting Election,” Boston Globe, November 4, 1920,

[32] “Not Miss Blackwell’s Most Exciting Election” Boston Globe, November 4, 1920.

[33] Meilan Solly, "What the First Women Voters Experienced When Registering for the 1920 Election," Smithsonian Magazine (July 30, 2020). Last Accessed October 2020, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-first-women-voters-experienced-when-registering-1920-election-180975435/