Helen Tufts Bailie

Helen Tufts Bailie (January 9, 1874 – May 1962) was an American social reformer and activist. Tufts is known for outing the Daughters of the American Revolution for blacklisting certain individuals and organizations in 1928. This controversy led Tufts to be banned from the organization and to become an advocate for women's, labor, and social rights.

Early life Helen Matilda Tufts was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1874. Her father was a Unitarian minister and her mother was a suffragist. In 1875, the family moved to Massachusetts, where Helen graduated from Cotting High School in Lexington in 1892. At the annual DAR Congress in Washington, D.C., Tufts was accused of "disturbing the harmony" of the DAR organization and harming its reputation, after the pamphlet distributions and her persistence pushing for an explanation about the blacklists. One year later she failed to appeal for reinstatement in DAR.

Later life After Tufts struggles with DAR and the blacklisting controversy, she continued to be active in the early women's movement and social movements. She formed a letter writing campaign to legalize birth control and in 1935, Tufts organized a campaign against legislation requiring Massachusetts teachers to take an oath affirming the United States and state constitutions. In January 1901 Born was diagnosed with uterine cancer and died later that month. Bailie and Tufts lived together starting in the fall of 1901, and in October 1908 the two married. Bailie started a basket weaving business, which he ran until his retirement in 1946. The couple had two children: daughter Helena Isabel, born in 1914, and son Terrill (nicknamed Sonny), born in 1916. The latter died of spinal meningitis at age 3.

Works Darling Daughter: A Satire (1956) New York: Greenwich Book Publishers Perverted Patriotism: A Story of D.A.R. Stewardship (1929) Cambridge, Mass. Our Threatened Heritage: A Letter to the Daughters of the American Revolution (1928) Cambridge, Mass.: D.A.R. Committee of Protest