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.

Teaching career

Maria de Lopez was a longtime educator. She was a teacher at Los Angeles High School where she taught courses where English was emphasized. She was the youngest professor at USC in 1903 and she also worked at UCLA as a translator. 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. She eventually taught at the UCLA, making her possibly the first Latina ever to do so. In the 1930s she served as president of the UCLA faculty women's club.

Suffrage work

de Lopez was a member of the Los Angeles based Votes for Women Club alongside Mrs. Cora Lewis, Mrs. Martha Salyer, Clara Shortridge Foltz, and Mary Foy which was formerly known as the Equality Club. She was a member in Women’s College club, Women’s Business Club and the Executive Board of the high school teachers’ association of Los Angeles. She was also the president of College Equal Suffrage League of Southern California when suffrage was won in 1911.

Spanish translation for the suffrage movement

She “Instituted a campaign among the Spaniards and the Mexicans and toured the state giving suffrage lectures in Spanish”. Maria de Lopez was the first person to make speeches in California on equal suffrage in the Spanish language. She also gave speeches on suffrage in English.

Professional experience

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 and she served in the ambulance corps in France and was later cited for bravery by the French government.

Personal life

Maria de Lopez was also known as Lupe, Eva, Maria, and Marie. hen she was a child de Lopez lived in San Gabriel, Los Angeles. Her father was a blacksmith. Juan Nepomiceno Lopez and her mother was Guadalupe. She had a sister named Ernestina de Lopez whom was also educated. The eldest daughter in her family, Belen, lived at home and worked as a seamstress and was not able to seek further education because she had to help at home. By the 1890s, all of the older children in her family had left out of the house and two 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. In 1897 she graduated from Pasadena High School and then she graduated from the Los Angeles Normal School, a teaching college. She later became a lecturer in Spanish at University of California, Southern Branch, now known as UCLA. When father died in 1904, both sisters returned home to San Gabriel to live with their mother. They financially supported their mother by both working as Spanish teachers. Since 1903, she was a teacher of Spanish in Los Angeles High School and teacher of English for foreigners in the Los Angeles Evening High School, training for citizenship.

She was married to Hugh Lowther, a professor at Occidental College. After marriage, she became Maria de Lopez Lowther or sometimes Maria de Lopez de Lowther. The 1930 census said de Lopez was married at age 38.

La casa vieja de Lopez or La casa de Lopez de Lowther Adobe was a home Juan Lopez, Maria de Lopez's father, moved into in 1849. Members of his family occupied the house until 1964 and when retired she lived in her ancestral adobe and today it is closed to the public.