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Leading off our #suffrage parade is GERTRUDE BARISH! She reportedly left her Russian homeland in order to escape political persecution during WWI. Barish’s fiery personality & determined spirit jumped off the page for us. She also posed some real Mystery. #SimmonsSuffs
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Barish studied Social Service at #SimmonsUniversity, graduating in 1919. She was a vocal proponent of women’s suffrage, organizing and publicly advocating #votesforwomen while still a student. She literally made headlines with her strong views!
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Barish was just a sophomore when she spoke up at a public meeting of the #Suffrage Committee. This was in 1917, at the start of the 4th Constitutional Convention in Boston, and #votesforwomen was on the agenda.
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Barish said: “Always we looked to United States as the home of democracy. We looked to you because you have liberty and we had nothing but the oppression of Nicholas Romanoff. Now we are advancing. Look out or we will have suffrage for all women even before United States.” 
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There's nothing like a little international competition to urge along the progress of #suffrage. Barish tapped into public worries that Russia or China would grant women the vote first, making them seem more enlightened than the U.S.!
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At Simmons College, Barish was a student leader: she served as Chairman of both the Consumers’ League and of the Civic League in her senior year. (The Civic League was an underground Suffrage Club but you'll have to wait until our #digitalexhibit to learn more about that...)
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Her classmates recognized Barish's activist spirit in her yearbook entry, noting that, “when we see Gertrude coming down the corridor, we feel instinctively that she is going to ask us to join something.”
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"A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute." What with Gertrude Barish's "fascinating" Russian accent, pluck and ambition, intelligence & resolve, intimate knowledge of Famous Celebrities, and love of the @SimmonsLibrary, we're pretty sure she was a spy.
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And indeed she briefly became a scandalous figure. In 1919, several newspapers reported that an American soldier named Leonard Swarthe was suing Barish for ten thousand dollars for “alleged breach of promise” after she refused to marry him.
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Doughboy Swarthe, who had been stationed in Russia during #WWI, claimed to have rescued Barish from death by a Russian firing squad after she “got into trouble with the authorities because of her political views.” Not just rescued our Gerty either...
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He allegedly loaned Gertrude $1,700 to pay for her passage to the United States and for her Simmons tuition. Apparently, Swarthe assumed that Barish would repay the loan in more than money, and was outraged when she informed him that she loved another man.
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The outcome of the court case remains unknown, and little information survives about Barish’s later life. That would be fitting if she was a spy. A spy resourceful enough to escape a firing squad. And a suffragist wise enough to escape an unwanted marriage.
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Maybe she married, or changed identities in some other way. But it's fitting the last we've found of #SimmonsSuff Gertrude Barish is that she gave a lecture at a Washington, D.C. march for world peace, led by Jane Addams, in 1921.
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Barish thus continued to work for political causes even after the #19thAmendment, which we know didn't solve inequality. Many suffragists participated in the international peace movement, thru organizations like the WILPF & the Women's Peace Party (founded in Boston in 1915).
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Thanks for joining our first daily sketch in the #SimmonsSuffs series! The parade of suffragists continues tomorrow with a founding trustee of #simmonsuniversity, a reformer & philanthropist who really knew her way around Gilded Age Boston. Until then! 15/15
