On March 3, 1913, the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, the first national women’s suffrage parade was held in Washington, DC. As part of the event, Allegory, a pageant written by playwright Hazel MacKaye (1880-1944), of Shirley, Massachusetts, was performed on the majestic, marble steps of the United States Treasury Building.

A skilled theatrical professional, MacKaye added her skills to the many diverse approaches used to argue the cause of voting rights for women. Using her talents for designing, directing and writing, she created four pageants about women’s rights for the suffragists. Deeply engaged in the fight for women’s right to vote, she was a charter member of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman’s Party, the more militant wing of the suffrage movement.

Born in New York on August 24, 1880 into a famous theatrical family, MacKaye was exposed to the dramatic arts from an early age. Her father, Steele MacKaye, was a prominent actor, playwright and  producer, and her older brother, Percy, a distinguished dramatist and poet.

As children, MacKaye and her younger brother, Benton, creator of the Appalachian Trail, acted in their brother’s early plays in Shirley’s Center Town Hall during summer vacations at their Aunt Sadie’s cottage. This bucolic New England community became the family’s permanent home and years later the Grove House on Parker Road Hazel’s residence.

Following in her family’s footsteps, MacKaye attended Radcliffe College’s theater and pageantry courses, becoming an honorary member of the Class of 1910. She acted with the Castle Square Theatre Company of Boston and The Coburn Players, often in productions of her brother Percy’s plays. At the time she joined the suffrage movement, she was both an author and producer of pageants, including the inspirational Susan B. Anthony performed at Convention Hall in Washington, DC to raise much-needed funds for the cause.

On August 18, 1920, victory was achieved when Tennessee’s vote completed the ratification of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women’s right to vote. When the news reached Shirley Center, MacKaye quickly gathered her family and friends at the Shirley Meeting House to ring its old bell in celebration. Held in her hands was a portrait of Susan B. Anthony, one of the leaders of the women’s rights movement. An observer could not help but recall that from that colonial meeting house marched the Shirley militia to the first battles for independence in the American Revolution 145 years earlier.

MacKaye directed the 75th anniversary celebration of the Seneca Falls Convention at the White House in 1923. Thousands attended. This would be her last pageant.

She died in 1944 and is buried in Shirley Center Cemetery beside her family. Her heartfelt words found in a letter to her mother in 1922 express her devotion to the cause of women’s rights: “Remember I am doing really big things…significant things…using my faculties to their utmost in a great cause. This is life for me.”