Maria Louise Baldwin (1856-1922)

Educator, Community Leader, Women’s Suffrage Advocate

by Katie Woods, Digital Public Historian

As an educator and community activist, Maria Baldwin employed education as a tool to both raise up her community and combat prejudice.

Born on September 13, 1856, Maria Baldwin grew up in Cambridge. Her parents, Peter and Mary Baldwin, were connected to many local professional and educated Black activists, giving Baldwin early access to this activist community. She graduated from Cambridge High School in 1874 and went briefly to teach in Maryland. Upon returning to Cambridge, Baldwin graduated from Cambridge Training School for Teachers and began teaching at the Agassiz School in the Cambridge Public School system in 1881.

While a young teacher, Baldwin also created an informal classroom in her home. She hosted Black Harvard students for weekly discussions. Among her in-home “pupils” was W.E.B. DuBois, who later became a noted civil rights leader and founder of the NAACP. DuBois recalled these sessions:

 I was then in my hottest, narrowest, self-centered, confident period…Most things I knew definitely and argued with scathing, unsympathetic finality that scared some into silence. But Maria Baldwin was always serene, just slightly mocking, refusing to be thundered or domineered into silence and answering always in that low, rich voice –with questionings, with frank admission of uncertainty which seemed to me then as exasperatingly weak.

Yet she grew on us all. Her poise commanded greater and greater respect. Her courage–her splendid, quiet courage astonished us, and so she came to larger life and accomplishment."

After teaching at the Agassiz School for eight years, Maria Baldwin became its principal in 1889. Baldwin recalled at first declining the unique opportunity to become the first Black principal of this school with a predominantly white student body and administration, saying, 

If I failed…it would be a conspicuous failure.” 

However, the superintendent of Cambridge schools, the school board, and even the former principal convinced her to take the job. Beloved by her students and the larger community, Baldwin successfully held the post of principal and later headmaster of Agassiz School for almost thirty years.

Maria Baldwin not only saw formal education as a path for growth and understanding, she also sought out opportunities to encourage education within the community. In 1893, Baldwin helped found the Woman’s Era Club with Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Florida Ruffin Ridley. This club for primarily Black Bostonian women provided a space for both learning and moral growth, while also serving as an avenue for civic engagement. Club members held lectures and classes, organized community fundraisers, and supported local efforts for women’s suffrage. The Woman’s Era Club also addressed significant issues affecting the Black community, such as access to education and job opportunities and widespread racial discrimination. Members particularly took an active role during the lynching crisis, protesting the lynchings of Black Americans primarily in the South. Within the club, Baldwin served as the Club’s Vice President in its early years, helping to organize events and lectures on a variety of topics.  

As club organizing among Black women grew in the early 1900s, Maria Baldwin became involved in numerous interracial as well as primarily Black community organizations. These included the Boston chapter of the NAACP (of which she served on the executive committee), the Afro-American League, the Twentieth Century Association, the Boston Literary and Historical Association, and the Robert Gould Shaw House. She also helped start the Soldiers’ Comfort Unit in 1918, which supported Black soldiers during World War I. In 1919, it became the League of Women for Community Service, and Baldwin served as its first president. 

Several of these organizations advocated for the cause of women’s suffrage, which Baldwin herself supported. In 1915, she contributed to the “Votes for Women” edition of the popular Black newspaper The Crisis, alongside other notable Black leaders. She wrote: 

It is wholly reasonable to infer that the extension of the suffrage will enable teachers to secure more consideration for themselves, and to have an important influence on the quality of the persons chosen to direct the schools.” 

Baldwin also criticized assumptions that with the vote, teachers, like any professionals with new-found power, could become power-hungry and self-interested. Instead, she argued that teachers’ noble convictions of service to the community would be applied in their use of the ballot.

Although retiring from the Agassiz School in 1918, Maria Baldwin maintained an active presence in her beloved communities. In 1922, she suffered a heart attack during a meeting for the Robert Gould Shaw House and abruptly passed away. Baldwin’s death came as a shock to many. Her body lay in state at the League of Women for Community Service building on 558 Massachusetts Ave, which later dedicated its library in her honor. 

The Agassiz School mourned Baldwin’s death as a profound loss to the community. At the time, the school newspaper printed: 

We at the school will realize more and more as we grow older that Miss Baldwin was one of the greatest beings that ever breathed. Her memory will always be a thing sacred. We loved her, loved her with a love that will never die.” 

This love continued decades later when a student-led movement resulted in the formal name change of the school to the Maria L. Baldwin School in 2002.

In 2023, the Massachusetts Women’s History Center, the City of Cambridge, Office of the City Manager, and Cambridge Historical Commission unveiled a suffrage marker in honor of Maria Baldwin and her work for women’s suffrage. This marker stands at the site of her former home on 196 Prospect Street and is part of the National Votes for Women Trail.