Maud Wood Park

Maud Wood Park (January 25, 1871 – May 8, 1955) was an American suffragist and women's rights activist.

Career overview

She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. While there she married Charles Edward Park. She toured colleges promoting it, and started chapters in thirty states. She also organized the National College Equal Suffrage League in 1908. She was BESAGG's executive secretary for twelve years. From 1925 until 1928 she was the League's legislative counselor. She also wrote the play Lucy Stone, which was first produced in 1939 in Boston. Being one of the few college women interested in suffrage, she was invited to speak at the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association annual dinner during her senior year. He died suddenly in 1928.

Work with the National American Women Suffrage Association From 1917 to 1919, Park led the congressional lobbying effort of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in which her task was to obtain congressional approval of the woman suffrage amendment. Park trained volunteers visiting Washington, D.C. to lobby their congressional representatives and coordinated the lobbying effort of the association. She developed strategies to get the amendment passed including keeping in-depth biographical and personal records of the members of congress.

Owing to World War I, Congress was only debating war-related issues at this time, but through her connections, Park was able to get a special committee on women's suffrage to be formed.

Maud Wood Park helped organize and head the Women's Joint Congressional Committee which passed the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921 and the Cable Act in 1922. This donation grew into a research library called the "Women's Archives," which was renamed in 1965 after Elizabeth Bancroft Schlesinger and her husband Arthur M. Schlesinger, as they were strong supporters of the library's mission.

Park died in 1955 in Massachusetts.