MCBRIDE, LUCIA MCCURDY (21 July 1880-18 Jan. 1970) spoke and organized for suffrage for WOMEN, holding offices in local (founder and director, Cleveland Woman Suffrage party), state (founder, financial secretary and director, Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, 1911-20) and national (finance committee) in suffrage organizations. She was an organizer of the LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS (LWV) OF CLEVELAND (LWV, local president 1933, 1943) and the state LWV and worked on the national LWV committee for governmental reform (1934). She served on the board of education of the CLEVELAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS (1933-35) and as the only female member of the City Planning Commission (1946). McBride was born in Cleveland, to William Henry and Fannie S. Rhodes McCurdy. McBride attended Shaw Academy and graduated from HATHAWAY BROWN (1899) and Miss Hersey's School in Boston (1901) On 6 June 1905, she married Malcolm Lee McBride. They had three children: Lucia, John Harris, and Malcolm Rhodes.
McBride played an active role in causes such as health, peace, LABOR, GOVERNMENT, and FAMILY PLANNING. She was an early board member of the VISITING NURSE ASSN. OF CLEVELAND (1904-11). McBride was vice-chair of the women's committee of the Ohio Council for National Defense during WORLD WAR I, and later, reversing her stance, served on the executive board of the Cleveland Council for the Prevention of War. In 1923 she took 2 women to Columbus, OH, to testify in favor of minimum wage laws; she condemned the labor of CHILDREN AND YOUTH as a member of the National Child Labor Commission. McBride took a leave from organizations such as the CITIZENS LEAGUE OF GREATER CLEVELAND (vice-president), the JUNIOR LEAGUE OF CLEVELAND, INC. (founder), and the WOMEN'S CITY CLUB (charter member) in 1929 to promote the proposed city manager system for Cleveland. She helped lay the groundwork for and was a founding trustee of Cleveland's first birth control clinic, the Maternal Health Association (est. 1928, later PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER CLEVELAND). McBride was a board member of the Cleveland School of Art (later the CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART) and the CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE, served on the Cleveland Commission on Public Works of Art and on the advisory committee of the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART (CMA). A collector of contemporary art (which she displayed in a gallery in her Cleveland home and loaned to museums), McBride helped initiate the forerunner of Patrons' Previews for the CMA's MAY SHOW (1930s). She is buried in LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.
Last Modified: 18 Jul 1997 03:58:50 PM"A Short History of Lucia McCurdy McBride, (Mrs. Malcolm L. McBride)," Typescript (n.d.), CWRU Archives.
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