Read on Twitter
Our virtual @SimmonsUniv #suffrage march continues w MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD, a prolific author, labor activist & #suffragist who supported her family from a young age. She understood that education & #votingrights were not luxuries for the elite but essential for all women.
1/
1/
Mary Caroline Crawford was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1874 to James Crawford, a laundry worker, and Mary (Coburn) Crawford. Public education promised a path upward. Mary passed a competitive exam to qualify for Boston Girls’ Latin School and graduated in 1892.
2/
2/
Crawford attended #Radcliffe College between 1894 and 1897. Financial hardship forced her to drop out before finishing her degree. But because of her social and intellectual engagement, her Radcliffe fellows always considered her a member of the class of 1898.
3/
3/
In 1899, the death of her father left Mary Caroline Crawford the sole provider for her mother and younger brother. So she became a journalist, writing special features and editorials for the Boston Transcript and working as the literary editor of the Boston Budget until 1902.
4/
4/
Mary Caroline Crawford remained a frequent contributor to a variety of newspapers and periodicals for much of her life, often writing about international affairs and women workers, and advocating for equal pay and world peace.
5/
5/
Crawford also gained national attention as an author and social historian, publishing nearly a book a year between 1902 and 1914. Many of her books devoted special attention to the experiences of women in early New England and in literary history.
6/
6/
For instance, take Crawford’s "The Romance of Old New England" (1902). She described the book as as “little sketches” of “the stories connected with the surviving old houses of New England.” But the houses are an excuse to write some women's history. #womenalsoknowhistory
7/
7/
Many of the tales in this first book of Crawford's are about individuals who became mainstays of #womenhistory 70 years later -- women like Deborah Sampson Gannett, “The Woman Veteran of the Continental Army;” Margaret Fuller; and Anne Hutchinson.
8/
8/
Crawford's most well-known work was "The College Girl of America" (1904), in which she encouraged college-educated women to pursue fulfilling careers after graduation.
9/
9/
"The College Girl of America" -- published 2 years before the first class of #simmonsuniversity had even graduated -- has a whole chapter on #SimmonsCollege with some lovely observations about the students there.
10/
10/
In the midst of her journalistic career, she also pursued a course in #socialwork at the Boston School for Social Workers, then a collaboration between Simmons College and Harvard University. She graduated in 1907.
11/
11/
Immediately after graduating from Simmons, Crawford founded Boston’s Social Service Publicity Bureau, serving as Financial and Publicity Counselor and Promoter of Welfare Organizations. She also became interested in women’s labor rights and trade unions during this time,
12/
12/
She briefly worked as a secretary for the Boston chapter of the Women’s Trade Union League, advocating on behalf of women bindery strikers. Among social workers and reformers, Crawford was best known for her work as Executive Secretary of the Ford Hall Forum 1908-1921.
13/
13/
In her role at the Ford Hall Forum, Crawford organized weekly Sunday gatherings for workers & their families and facilitated discussions about labor rights &unionization. She later conducted a similar program at the Old South Meeting House in Boston.
14/
14/
In addition to her literary and social work, Mary Caroline Crawford was involved in politics and club activism for much of her life. A Boston Globe reporter described her as “an ardent #suffragist” in 1911.
15/
15/
She continued to advocate for women politically after #19thAmendment, supporting women’s right to serve on a jury in a Women’s City Club debate in 1928. In her later years, she described herself as a Wilsonian Democrat and admitted to “heckling senators…sometimes by letter.”
16/
16/
