Luscomb, Florence, 1887-1985
Variant namesBiographical notes:
Florence Hope Luscomb, social and political activist, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on February 6, 1887, the daughter of Otis and Hannah Skinner (Knox) Luscomb. With an S.B. in architecture (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1909), she worked as an architect until 1917, when she became executive secretary for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. She held positions in the Massachusetts Civic League and other organizations and agencies until 1933, when she became a full-time social and political activist. In the early 1920s Luscomb began to serve on the boards of civil rights, civil liberties, and other organizations; over the next 50 years these included the NAACP (Boston), the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the American League for Peace and Democracy, and many others. She helped organize and was president of a Boston local of the United Office and Professional Workers of America. Luscomb ran unsuccessfully for the Boston City Council, U.S. House of Representatives, and governor of Massachusetts. Never a communist, she opposed anti-communist investigations as attempts to curtail dissent and in the 1950s worked to stop them. In 1955 she was investigated as a subversive by government committees in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Luscomb travelled to the Soviet Union in 1935 and illegally to China in 1962 and attended several international peace and women's conferences. In the 1960s she worked against the Vietnam War and in the 1970s frequently spoke to women's groups and conferences. From the 1950s to the mid 1970s, Luscomb lived in cooperative houses, usually with much younger people. She died in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1985 at 98.
From the guide to the Additional papers of Florence Luscomb, 1888-1988, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
Luscomb was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Hannah Skinner (Knox) and Otis Luscomb. Her father was an unsuccessful artist. Her mother was a dedicated suffragist and women's rights activist. When Florence was one and a half years old, her parents separated and she moved with her mother to Boston, while her older brother, Otis Kerro Luscomb, lived with their father. As a child in Boston, she went with her mother to women's suffrage events, at one point seeing Susan B. Anthony speak. She became an ardent suffragist, initially by selling a pro-suffrage newspaper on the street.
Luscomb was among the first ten women to earn a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Women still experienced significant challenges during her tenure there. For example, Luscomb had to inquire at twelve firms before one of them would hire her for an internship after her second year.
Following her graduation, she was hired by Ida Annah Ryan, the sixth woman to earn an architecture degree from M.I.T. Later, she would become a partner in Ryan's firm. Ryan and Luscomb shared an interest in women's suffrage and Ryan gave Luscomb a degree of flexibility at work that allowed her to be active in the women's suffrage movement. During this time, Luscomb helped organize various events for the suffrage movement and, during a public debate on adding a suffrage amendment to the state constitution, gave more than 200 speeches in 14 weeks.
She later continued her education in architecture at the newly opened Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in 1916.
In addition to her work with Ryan, she began working with local architect Henry Atherton Frost and landscape architect Bremer Whidden Pond. Due to the entrance of the United States into World War I in 1917, new construction slumped and her architectural career was put on hiatus.
She accepted a position as executive secretary for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government. She went on to work for a number of organizations in the Boston area, including the Boston chapters of the League of Women Voters, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and organizations dedicated to prison reform and factory safety. She was a charter member of the League of Women Voters, formed once women gained the vote. Luscomb also helped found a local of the United Office and Professional Workers of America and served as a volunteer with the local NAACP and ACLU. From 1911, she considered herself a citizen of the world, traveling to nations across Europe and Asia for conferences, yet she retained pride in her Yankee heritage. Her political views were well-developed and unique.
Upon her mother's death in 1933, Luscomb inherited enough money that she could dedicate her time fully to activism. She ran for public office four times, more to make her causes visible than to win. She nearly won the first race she entered, for Boston Council in 1922. Her campaigns for races for Congress in 1936 and 1950 and for governor in 1952 were largely in protest. An ardent anti-McCarthyist, she was at one point called to testify before a committee in the Massachusetts legislature that was investigating communism. She wrote an early anti-Vietnam War leaflet and later, would advise some of the founders of the American feminist movement, encouraging them to include the poor and women of color.
Luscomb designed her own holiday cabin in Tamworth, New Hampshire. After WWII and until the 1970s, she spent her summers there, contributing to the Appalachian Mountain Club.
She had lived in various cooperative houses after her mother's death, including a Cambridge cooperative house at 64 Wendell Street. Luscomb lived there until 1980, when she moved into an elder-care facility in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she died October 13, 1985, at age 98.
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Occupations:
- Architect
- Social reformers
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Places:
- New York, NY, US
- Watertown, MA, US
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 00, GB
- Virginia, VA, US
- Kingdom of Spain, 00, ES
- Michigan, MI, US
- Republic of Cuba, 00, CU
- Tamworth, NH, US
- Lowell, MA, US
- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, ,
- Detroit, MI, US
- People’s Republic of China, 00, CN
- Ohio, OH, US
- Boston, MA, US
- Maine, ME, US
