María de López

Maria Guadalupe Evangelina de Lopez was a California suffragist from Los Angeles school teacher. She campaigned and translated at rallies in Southern California where suffragists distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets in Spanish. On October 3, 1911, the Votes for Women Club held a large rally at the plaza which featured Maria de Lopez giving her speech in Spanish.

Education

It was hard for Mexican American women to be able to become successful teachers due to several factors.

• • A women usually needed both financial and familial support to get the training required for a white-collar job like teaching.
  • In society Mexican and Mexican-American women were not taken into account as part of Southern California’s economic and political future
  • Potential employers may have not taken Mexican and Mexican American job applicants seriously
  • Ethnic Discrimination. She was the President of the College Equal Suffrage League.

Teaching career

Maria de Lopez was a longtime educator.

• Teacher at Los Angeles High School, focusing on English as a second language
• Youngest professor at USC in 1902
• Worked at UCLA as a translator

Suffrage work

• Member of the Los Angeles based Votes for Women Club alongside Mrs. Cora Lewis, Mrs. Martha Salyer, Clara Shortridge Foltz, and Mary Foy
  • Formerly known as the Equality Club
• Member in Women’s College club, Women’s Business Club, Executive Board of the high school teachers’ ass’n of los angeles
• President of college Equal Suffrage League of Southern California when suffrage was won in 1911

Translation

• “Instituted a campaign among the Spaniards and the Mexicans and toured the state giving suffrage lectures in Spanish”
• First person to make speeches in California on equal suffrage in the Spanish language also spoke in english

University career

• In 1902, she became the youngest instructor at the University of California, she was a Spanish-language translator for the suffrage movement during the 1911 state-wide campaign
  • Eventually taught at the UCLA, making her possibly the first Latina ever to do so

Personal Life

• Lived in San Gabriel, LA

• Father was a blacksmith; Juan Nepomiceno Lopez and Guadalupe
• Had a sister named Ernestina de Lopez; eldest daughter in family, Belen, lived at home and worked as a seamstress
• Graduated Pasadena High School 1897
• Lecturer in spanish at UCLA (University of California, Southern Branch)
• By the 1890s, all of the older children in her family had left out of the house (2 sisters of Maria de Lopez had married and left home)
  • This made it financially easier on the parents and made it possible for Maria and Ernestina de lopez to stay in school
• Both sisters completed highschool and then graduated from the Los Angeles Normal School (teaching college)
  • Maria went on to the University of California
• When father died in 1904, both sisters returned home to San Gabriel to live with their mother
  • Financially supported by both working as Spanish teachers
  • Since 1903, teacher of Spanish in Los Angeles High School; teacher of English for foreigners in the Los Angeles Evening High School, training for citizenship
• After marriage, she became Maria de Lopez Lowther or sometimes Maria de Lopez de Lowther
  • Married to Hugh Lowther, a professor at Occidental College
• During WWI, Maria de Lopez temporarily gave up her teaching job and moved to New York City
  • There she trained as an ambulance driver and even learned to fly a plane
  • She served in the ambulance corps in France and was later cited for bravery by the French government
• La casa vieja de lopez
  • Juan Lopez moved into the house in 1849, and members of his family occupied the house until 1964
  • Today it is closed to the public
• Master of arts; BS
• When retired she lived in her ancestral adobe, La casa Vieja or Adobe Lopez de Lowther
• Known as Lupe, Eva, Maria, and Marie