The wall behind the marble panels is covered with wallpaper created out of a repeating pattern of six government documents, each of which relates to a cause one or more of the six honorees fought for.

An Act for the removal of Insane Convicts from the State Prison (1844).
Passed in response to Dorothea Dix's campaign on behalf of the mentally ill, this law provided for moving convicts who "become deranged" out of state prisons and into the State Lunatic Hospital.

Report of the Committee on the Qualification of Voters (1853)
In June of 1853, Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Blackwell were among a group of men and women who petitioned the Massachusetts legislature meeting in constitutional convention to strike the word "male" from the state constitution, thereby giving women the right to vote. In this report, a legislative committee listed the arguments advanced by supporters of woman suffrage and explained that it was refusing to grant their request because it believed that "a vast proportion of the women of Massachusetts do consent to their political condition."

An Act Forbidding Unjust Discrimination on Account of Color Race (1865)
Sarah Parker Remond first came to public notice in l853 when she was ejected from a Boston theater because she refused to sit in a segregated gallery. She was handled roughly by a policeman, and successfully sued the theater's owners for damages. It wasn't until l865, two months after the end of the Civil War and 22 years after her brother Charles had led the fight to integrate seating on Massachusetts trains, that the legislature passed this law outlawing segregation in all public accommodations.

An Act to Give Women the Right to Vote for the Members of School Committees (1879)
For decades, supporters of woman suffrage, including Lucy Stone, Josephine Ruffin, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and Florence Luscomb, worked without success to get a suffrage amendment to the Massachusetts constitution. Their only victory came in 1879 with the passage of this law giving them the right to vote in school board elections. However, because Lucy Stone refused to register as Lucy Blackwell, insisting "there is no law that requires a wife to take her husband's name," she was never allowed to exercise even this limited franchise.

An Act Relative to the Hours of Employment of Women and Minors (l912)
For years, Mary Kenney O'Sullivan and other trade unionists lobbied the Massachusetts legislature to limit the number of hours a week women and children under 18 could work in factories. In 1912, the fight for a 54-hour law passed was won; factory owners refused to raise hourly wages, which meant smaller pay checks for already struggling workers. In Lawrence, 30,000 textile workers -many of them women--staged a dramatic strike, which ended in victory after three months. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan was among their strongest supporters.

Interim Report of the Senate Commission to Investigate Communism in Massachusetts (1955)
In l946, Florence Luscomb wrote to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, "While I am not, and never have been a Communist, I have publicly defended the Constitutional right of any American to hold any political and economic views his conscience dictates." In 1955, Luscomb was called before the Senate Commission to Investigate Communism in Massachusetts. She answered questions about her background but refused to confirm or deny her membership in a long list of organizations. "I will not answer compulsory questions by government inquisitors into matters of my conscience and opinions... I have nothing to hide... But I cannot and will not tear up the Constitution and its guaranteed liberties, won with blood and tears. I cannot and will not be a party with you in destroying American democracy."