Holt, Margaret Goddard, 1911-2004

Margaret Goddard Holt was born on October 4, 1911 in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania to Fanny Whiting Reed and Harold Clarke Goddard, professor of English at Swarthmore College; she had one sister, Eleanor Goddard Worthen. She was raised a Quaker and absorbed the values of that tradition, but never joined the Society of Friends. She was also guided by Zen Buddhism, especially the teachings of Lao Tse. After graduating from Swarthmore High School in 1929, she studied art at various institutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Students' League in New York City, and the Cummington (Massachusetts) School of the Arts. She taught at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and at the School in Rose Valley in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania (both progressive schools), prior to her marriage in 1939 to Lee Elbert Holt (March 23, 1912 - January 23, 2004). The Holts were married for sixty-four years and had two children, Geoffrey Lincoln and Alison. In 1947, after living in Indiana, Wisconsin, New York and Connecticut, the Holts settled in Springfield, Massachusetts, where Lee taught English at American International College and Margaret worked part-time teaching art therapy to the handicapped at United Cerebral Palsy and Munson State Hospital. They moved to Amherst, Massachusetts in 1977. After the World War II bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the beginnings of the Cold War, Margaret Holt began her lifetime of work in peace and justice activism. She helped organize some of the major social justice demonstrations of the 1960s, including the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. in 1963; coordinated, with Lee, frequent vigils in Springfield from 1967 to 1972 in protest of the Vietnam War; co-founded the Springfield chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom; was a pivotal member of the Gray Panthers of the Pioneer Valley; and, beginning in 2000, corresponded weekly with death row prisoners, in addition to providing occasional financial support to their families. With Lee, Margaret Holt helped establish the Amherst (Massachusetts) Vigil for a Nuclear Free World in 1979 and from that time forward, regardless of weather, she attended weekly noon Sunday vigils on the Amherst Town Common. Margaret Holt died in Amherst, Massachusetts on January 1, 2004.

From the guide to the Margaret Goddard Holt Papers MS 196., 1814-2004, 1960-2000, (Sophia Smith Collection)

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