By Alison Tocci

On August 18, 1920, just over a hundred years ago, Shirley women gathered to ring the bell at the Shirley Meeting House to mark passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Hazel MacKaye (second from right) was a Shirley resident, theater professional, and key player supporting the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Alice Paul, Quaker, Suffragist, and foremost leader and strategist of the campaign for women’s rights, called upon Hazel MacKaye to create a series of colorful pageants promoting the cause.

In 1913, MacKaye’s “Allegory” was staged on the steps of the U.S. Treasury Building and praised as “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country” in The New York Times. The influential pageant attracted a massive turnout one day prior to Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Seven years later, the 19th Amendment was ratified after a 70-year campaign. Leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul, millions of women serving in and supporting the war efforts during World War I, and the inspired pageantry of Hazel MacKaye all contributed to the ultimate passage of the bill.

On August 1, 2020, in the midst of the COVID outbreak, the Shirley Historical Society gathered a group of Shirley women to ring the Meeting House bell to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. In the photo, Bull Run Innkeeper Alison Tocci holds an autographed photograph of Alice Paul inscribed to Hazel MacKaye. Hazel’s gravestone can be found in the historic Shirley Center Cemetery, next to the Meeting House.

Alison Tocci grew up in Shirley overlooking the Common, with the Meeting House as her neighbor. Following in her family’s footsteps, Alison and her husband are now the Bull Run Innkeepers.