Records of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, 1920-1975

The League of Women Voters was founded in 1920 during the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, just months before the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote. Maud Wood Park of Massachusetts was elected the League's first president. This strictly non-partisan political organization was established to help women carry out their responsibilities as voters, interest people in their government by encouraging them to participate in shaping public policy, and take a more active part in government functions. From its inception, the League has supported or opposed specific policies, but never political candidates. A grassroots organization, the League has state and local chapters in addition to the national body.

Many founding delegates were from Massachusetts, and participated in local suffrage organizations. These suffrage groups promptly reformed as chapters of the League of Women Voters after passage of the 19th Amendment. Originally incorporated in 1893, the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association dissolved and regrouped in May 1920 as the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, stating that its purpose was to promote education in citizenship, and to co-operate in carrying out the program of the national League by doing any or all lawful things that would tend to further these ends. To honor the Association's former leader, the newly-formed League designated Alice Stone Blackwell the permanent honorary president.

The Massachusetts League began its legislative campaign by approving the principle of maternity legislation; endorsing what would prove to be the unsuccessful efforts to enact the Smith-Towner bill and to elevate the federal Office of Education to a cabinet-level agency; urging Congress to take steps to relieve the terrible conditions of starvation existing in Europe at the time; and calling upon all the legislatures of the states that had not yet ratified the 19th Amendment to do so. In the following years, women joined not as single-minded crusaders, but as citizens interested in many phases of social welfare and good government. The present organization is still set up similarly, with two major components: 1) action, to study issues, survey opinions of members, and act to implement the members' consensus (also known as "programs"), and 2) voters service, to provide people with information on elections through educational events and services. In 1948, the group changed its name to the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts (LWVM).