Browse Items (50 total)

In a letter to her mother written mid-November, Jennie ‘11 gleefully describes leading a parade of her friends through campus dressed as suffragists. The group was clad in identical black gowns and gloves, white stockings, hats, glasses, and…

Jeannette Marks, English professor and life partner of Mount Holyoke President Mary Woolley, was a strong supporter of the women’s rights movement. Marks and Woolley had several collies which were popular with students; one is shown here wearing a…

Jeannette wrote “Reasons for the Opposition of the Further Extension of the Suffrage,” for her English I class. Because she has not been fully convinced by any of the pro-suffrage arguments she has heard, she explores the logic behind the…

During the summer of 1963, Elizabeth Butters ‘66 spent eight weeks in rural North Carolina working in a voter education program organized by the American Friends Service Committee. Upon her return, she was interviewed by the school newspaper about…

Although she was unwilling to align herself with the suffragist cause, Hortense wrote home about Suffrage Day, which took place on April 24. She describes the event: “after chapel a girl dressed in white beat a drum and there were all sorts of…

In April 1960, Louise DeCosta ‘62, Marion Fitch ‘62, Susan Heineman ‘60, Susan Higinbotham ‘62, and Anne Martin ‘62 wrote this letter to the administration of Mount Holyoke to declare the formation of the Mount Holyoke Committee on Civil…

Handmade Votes for Women Sash, 1916 This sash belonged to Florence Tuttle ‘16, an active member of the National College Equal Suffrage League serving in multiple leadership roles. She and two classmates handcrafted their sashes for Suffrage Day and…

The yearbook page for the Fellowship of Faiths (FOF) also discusses the efforts of the Civil Actions Group, an unofficial sub-group of the large interfaith organization on campus at the time. Both groups worked together on a tutorial program in…

This yearbook page gives a brief history of the Mount Holyoke chapter of the National College Equal Suffrage League and details its activities. Through its open meetings, the League brought many important suffragists to speak on campus. Mentioned on…

The week before she would cast her vote in the mock election, Edith wrote to her father that students “are all up in arms just now over the question of woman’s suffrage.” She explains the occasion for the mock election by saying “there is to…

During the spring of 1911, Mount Holyoke students established a chapter of the National College Equal Suffrage League on campus. Slava Balanbanoff x’13, the first secretary-treasurer, hand-copied and signed the group’s constitution, which set up…

In these excerpts from Tiffany McClain’s ‘01 oral history project, Barbara Smith ‘69 discusses what it was like being a Black student at Mount Holyoke in the 1960s. Smith describes racist assumptions from professors about her academic ability…

Adra Powers turned in these two assignments about suffrage for her English II class, showing that students were engaging in political topics through the curriculum. The first, a revision of a short paragraph, does not debate whether women should be…