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May Wright Sewall | |
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| Born | Mary Eliza Wright May 27, 1844 Greenfield, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | July 22, 1920 (aged 76) Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Suffrage movement |
| Spouses | Edwin W. Thompson
(m. 1872; died 1875)Theodore Lovett Sewall
(m. 1880; died 1895) |
May Wright Sewall (née Mary Eliza Wright; May 27, 1844 – July 22, 1920) was an American reformer, who was known for her service to the causes of education, women's rights, and world peace. She was born in Greenfield, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Sewall served as chairman of the National Woman Suffrage Association's executive committee from 1882 to 1890, and was the organization's first recording secretary. She also served as president of the National Council of Women of the United States from 1897 to 1899, and president of the International Council of Women from 1899 to 1904. In addition, she helped organize the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and served as its first vice-president. Sewall was also an organizer of the World's Congress of Representative Women, which was held in conjunction with the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. U.S. President William McKinley appointed her as a U.S. representative of women to the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris.
Sewall became chairman of the National Council of Women's standing committee on peace and arbitration in 1904 and chaired and organized the International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Sewall was also among the sixty delegates who joined Henry Ford's Peace Ship, an unofficial peace expedition aboard the Oscar II in an unsuccessful attempt to halt the war in Europe in 1915.[citation needed]
In addition to her work on women's rights Sewall was as an educator and lecturer, civic organizer, and spiritualist. In 1882 she and her second husband, Theodore Lovett Sewall, founded the Girls' Classical School in Indianapolis. The school was known for its rigorous college preparatory courses, physical education for women, and innovative adult education and domestic science programs. Sewall also helped to establish several civic organizations, most notably the Indianapolis Woman's Club, the Indianapolis Propylaeum, the Art Association of Indianapolis (later known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art), the Contemporary Club of Indianapolis, and the John Herron Art Institute, which became the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Although Sewall converted to spiritualism in 1897, she concealed her spiritualist activities from the public until the publication of her book, Neither Dead Nor Sleeping, two months prior to her death in 1920.[citation needed]