Elizabeth Glendower Evans

Evans née Gardiner was born on February 28, 1856 in New Rochelle, New York.[1] She inherited a significant amount of money when she turned 26. In 1882 she married Glendower Evans who died four years later, in 1886.[2]

Evans traveled to England in 1908. There she became involved in understanding the issues of industrialized society including hazardous working conditions and unemployment. There she was introduced to socialism.[3]

When Evans returned to the United States she took up the cause of women's suffrage and the associated problems of tenements and factory work arising from disenfranchisement.[3]

Evans pursued social reform, serving in a variety of positions. She was a trustee of the Massachusetts State Reform Schools from 1886 through 1914. She was a member of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston as well as the Boston Women's Trade Union League, the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, and the Massachusetts Consumers' League. In 1915 Evans served as a delegate to the International Congress of Women at the Hague. She was the first National Organizer of the Woman's Peace Party.[4] From 1920 until her death she was a national director of the American Civil Liberties Union.[2]

Evans died on December 12, 1937 in Brookline, Massachusetts.[2]

Evans papers are housed at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[3]

• List of suffragists and suffragettes

• Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Progressive Reform: From Minimum Wage to Sacco and Vanzetti and the American Civil Liberties Union, 1907-1938 by Jana Brubaker, Alexander Street Press, 2009