Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People, Site

Location

196 Prospect St., Cambridge, MA 02139

Lat/Long

42.370137, -71.1001624

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Maria L. Baldwin, educator, school master, and women’s club leader, advocated for women’s suffrage prior to the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that would finally secure women’s right to vote in 1920. In addition to her suffrage advocacy, Baldwin was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In August 1915, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP, included Baldwin among the “Leading Thinkers of Colored America” that contributed articles to the publication’s “Votes for Women” symposium. Baldwin, then the principal of the Agassiz School in Cambridge, titled her article, “Votes for Teachers.” In it, she promoted women’s suffrage as a means to improve education and society:

Women teachers in those states where school suffrage has already been granted them have found out that even so meagre a share of voting power has given them a definite influence, and has brought about a few notable results. In several cases local schools have been kept, by the women’s vote, from the control of persons who threatened all that was best in them. Candidates for election to school boards reckon early with the “teacher vote” and hasten to announce their “rightness” on this or that issue supposedly dear to teachers. It is wholly reasonable to infer that the extension of the suffrage will enable teachers to secure more consideration for themselves, and to have an important influence on the quality of the persons chosen to direct the schools.

By October 1916, she had been promoted to school master of the Agassiz School. Baldwin died suddenly in January 1922. Her obituary published in the January 10, 1922 edition of the Boston Globe recounted:

Her reputation as a teacher was enviable. Her kindness and patience with the children under her direction in scholastic activities throughout her long period at the Agassiz School, brought her the high esteem of thousands in Cambridge.