By Laurie O’Neill — [email protected]
It was a radical act. And a history-making one.
The place was the Town House, the date was March 29, 1880, and the event was Town Meeting, previously the domain of Concord’s white male citizens.
As the superintendent of schools vocally objected, a woman rose from her seat and strode confidently to the ballot box to vote in the School Committee election.
She was Louisa May Alcott, writer and women’s rights advocate who would become the first female to vote in a Concord town election. Nineteen other women, including Alcott’s sister Anna, voted next.
“Among the new voters were descendants of Major Buttrick of Concord fight renown [1775], two of Hancock and Quincy, and others whose grandfathers or great grandfathers had been among the first settlers of the town … the ice is broken …” Alcott wrote in “The Women’s Journal” the next day.
Louisa, a.k.a. Jan Turnquist, executive director of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, reenacted the moment on March 29 in the room where it happened. Joe Palumbo played Town Meeting moderator Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a local lawyer.
20 women, no men
After the vote, Alcott wrote, “No bolt fell on our audacious heads, no earthquake shook the town, but a pleasing surprise created a general outbreak of laughter and applause.” As soon as the women cast their ballots at Town Meeting, the voting was closed. The School Committee had been elected by 20 women. And no men.
Orchard House planned the program, titled “Louisa May Alcott and the Journey to Universal Enfranchisement,” to celebrate Women’s History Month and Concord250. The event was meant to foster “the ideals of liberty, personal agency, and universal suffrage,” said Turnquist, and was meant to be “about every single human having equal rights, not only women.”
Alcott’s family was progressive, supporting suffrage and abolitionism. Her mother, Abby, had petitioned, in vain, the state legislature in 1853, demanding equal political rights for women in Massachusetts.
Louisa “took up her mother’s mantle and tried to keep her flag raised high,” Turnquist said.
‘Newfound empowerment’
In 1879, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill giving women the right to vote, but only in school committee elections, saying that this matter was related to children. Alcott was angry, but she went door to door, urging women to register to vote, and she held meetings that taught them how to cast a ballot.
Alcott vowed she would work for a better turnout for the next election, but she was not successful. Only seven women voted in 1883.
It would be 1920 before the 19th Amendment to the Constitution to recognize women’s right to vote — or at least white women’s right — took effect.
Turnquist hoped attendees at the reenactment would “revel in the newfound empowerment these women achieved by actively participating in democracy as never before.”
The overflow crowd did, cheering and applauding when Alcott placed her ballot in the small wooden box as Hoar looked on with a scowl.
