Helen Tufts Bailie
Helen Tufts Bailie was a social reformer and activist. Tufts is known for outing the Daughters of the American Revolution for blacklisting certain individuals and organizations in 1928. This controversy led Tufts to be banned from the organization and to become an advocate for women's, labor, and social rights.
Early life
Helen Matilda Tufts was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1874. Her father was a Unitarian minister and her mother was a suffragist. In 1875, the family moved to Massachusetts, where Helen graduated from Cotting High School in Lexington in 1892. After graduation, she worked as a proofreader and typesetter at Riverside Press. She then moved on to be a secretary at Houghton Mifflin in Boston. In April 1895 she met Helena Born, a writer, anarchist, and labor organizer. Born became a major influence on Tufts' lifestyle and activities; Tufts became vegetarian, acquired an interest in the writing of Walt Whitman, and became active in dress reform, anarchism, communism, and socialism.Daughters of the American Revolution
In 1915 Tufts joined the Anne Adams Tufts chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1927 she discovered that the DAR maintained lists of "doubtful speakers." These lists included the organizations such as the National Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Peace Society, and individuals like Jane Addams, William Allen White and Mary Wooley. After investigating, she made the lists public in February 1928.In March 1928 she wrote a pamphlet called "" to protest the blacklists. Fifteen DAR members, called the Committee on Protest and headed by Bailie, signed the pamphlet and helped to distribute it throughout the United States. Both members and officers of three greater Boston area chapters were involved in the group. At the annual DAR Congress in Washington, D.C., Tufts was accused of "disturbing the harmony" of the DAR organization and harming its reputation, after the pamphlet distributions and her persistence pushing for an explanation about the blacklists. One year later she failed to appeal for reinstatement in DAR.