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Commonwealth Museum   Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin
Commonwealth Museum Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin

Suffragist of the Month: Anna Howard Shaw (1847– 1919)


Anna Howard Shaw:   Download the PDF


Anna Howard Shaw became one of the most effective suffragist orators of her generation and President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

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“I do not believe subjugation is woman’s duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or to many men.”

– Anna Howard Shaw

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Anna Howard Shaw National Portrait Gallery
Anna Howard Shaw
- National Portrait Gallery

Coming to America 
Born in England, Anna Howard Shaw came to Massachusetts as a child after her father filed for bankruptcy. After finding stable work in Lawrence, her father uprooted the family to develop a farm in Michigan. Arriving in an isolated and barren forest, Shaw’s mother was discouraged. Young Anna discovered that she had both physical strength and competence in clearing the land and remodeling a crude log cabin into a home.

Susan B. Anthony’s niece, Lucy Anthony, became her lifelong friend and companion. They shared this house in Pennsylvania and for a time maintained a summer home in Osterville on Cape Cod.
Susan B. Anthony’s niece, Lucy Anthony, became her lifelong friend and companion. They shared this house in Pennsylvania and for a time maintained a summer home in Osterville on Cape Cod.

Taking the Stage
 The novelty of a woman minister was featured in a Woman’s Journal article. Shaw moved to Boston to work on the Journal, a leading suffrage publication, and to travel as a paid lecturer. Later she met Susan B. Anthony who would have the greatest influence on her career.

Anna Howard Shaw, Library of Congress

Anna Howard Shaw

- Library of Congress

Race Matters
Shaw was President of NAWSA from 1904 to 1915. In 1911 W.E.B. DuBois criticized her statement: “Do not touch the Negro problem. It will offend the South.” Notably, in response to criticism, DuBois was invited to address the NAWSA convention in 1912. For the 1913 Washington, D.C. parade, NAWSA, under Shaw’s leadership, instructed “all marshals to see that all colored women who wish to march shall be accorded every service given to other marchers.”

Mary A. Livermore’s name appears next to Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, William Lloyd Garrison, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson as editors of The Woman’s Journal. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Anna Howard Shaw served as minister at this church in Dennis on Cape Cod.
- Courtesy of Dennis Union Church

Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw
Although both parents discouraged her plans, Anna had a passion for preaching, eventually becoming the second woman to graduate from Boston University’s School of Theology. She later completed medical school at BU but did not practice. In 1880 she was one of the first women to be ordained a Methodist minister after being refused ordination several times. As a minister on Cape Cod, she developed an interest in several causes including peace, temperance, and woman’s suffrage.

Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in doctoral robes. Today the Anna Howard Shaw Center at Boston University is dedicated to inclusion and to the encouragement of women in the ministry.
Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in doctoral robes. Today the Anna Howard Shaw Center at Boston University is dedicated to inclusion and to the encouragement of women in the ministry.

- Library of Congress

Anna Howard Shaw learned to drive at the age of sixty-eight after suffragists presented a yellow Saxon coup as a gift. (The color yellow symbolized the movement.) The car was seized during her dispute with Pennsylvania over “taxation without representation” but bought back by suffragists.
Anna Howard Shaw learned to drive at the age of sixty-eight after suffragists presented a yellow Saxon coup as a gift. (The color yellow symbolized the movement.) The car was seized during her dispute with Pennsylvania over “taxation without representation” but bought back by suffragists.

Renowned as a dynamic speaker nationally and internationally, Shaw moved the suffrage cause forward. She died in 1919 shortly before passage of the 19th Amendment.