Tuesday is Women’s Equality Day, which celebrates women in the U.S. winning the right to vote. It won’t surprise you to know that JP has long been a hotbed of activism on behalf of women’s rights. Here are a few feminist forebears with ties to JP.
For more on all the women below, please visit the Jamaica Plain Historical Society’s web site.
Judith Winsor Smith: She cast her first ballot in 1920 at the age of 99 after a lifetime of working for women’s rights.
Lucy Stone: Buried at Forest Hills Cemetery, Stone was the first Bay State woman to receive a college degree.
Alice Stone Blackwell: Daughter of Lucy Stone, also buried at Forest Hills Cemetery. She edited the Women’s Journal for a quarter of a century.
Ednah Dow Cheney: Suffragist and President of the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
Susan Walker FitzGerald: Lived at 7 Greenough Ave. and was the first female Democrat elected to the state legislature.
Elizabeth Peabody: She lived at 8 Gordon St. and was mother of the kindergarten movement.
Read more about these extraordinary JP women at the JP Historical Society.
