'The obligation of opportunity': Maud Wood Park, the College Equal Suffrage League and the response of women students in Massachusetts colleges, 1900--1920

This dissertation examines the work of Maud Wood Park, suffragist and political educator of women, and the College Equal Suffrage League, the organization she founded in Boston in 1900, as they work to persuade college women to support woman suffrage. Park believed that college women had an obligation to support woman suffrage and could be instrumental in its achievement. For twenty years the College Equal Suffrage League served as a forum through which college women could discuss and debate issues related to the role of women in the civic life.; I describe how Park became a suffragist and what led her to place a special emphasis on working with college-educated women. I also examine her personal philosophy regarding the obligation she believed educated women had to the suffrage movement as well as the responsibility she thought they should assume for participation and leadership in civic affairs. I show that the origins of Maud Wood Park's lifelong commitment to the political education of women are situated in the College Equal Suffrage League.; I also describe the founding of the CESL, its membership, work plan, challenges faced and its transformation in 1908 into a national affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. I place particular emphasis on the educational strategies such as lectures, debates, books and essay contests used by Park and the CESL with women college students.; In addition, I examine and analyze in close detail the response to the CESL message of students from Boston University and Jackson, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe and Wellesley Colleges from 1900 to 1920. I look also at the reaction of college administrators and faculty to student interest in bringing suffrage-related issues onto the college campus. This institutional group study provides a detailed account of what occurred regarding suffrage on these six campuses.; I conclude by looking at Park's continued commitment to the political education of women in her capacity as the first president of the National League of Women Voters, the non-partisan, voter education, organization that was formed after the woman suffrage movement ended in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.