1925 February 4

Congress Holds First-Ever Hearings on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for Women’s Rights

 

One hundred women from across the country attended the hearings by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on this day in the first-ever hearings on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), an amendment to the Constitution which would grant women equality.

The National Woman’s Party, sponsor of the ERA, organized the large turnout at the hearings.

Alice Paul, who had led the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote, drafted and introduced the ERA at Seneca Falls, New York, on July 21, 1923. The ERA was first introduced in Congress in December 1923.

Read: Christine A. Lunardini, From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928 (1986)

See a chronology of the National Woman’s Party history:  http://www.loc.gov/collections/static/women-of-protest/images/detchron.pdf

Read Alice Paul’s biography: Jill Zahniser and Amelia Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (2014)

And more: Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2010)

Visit the National Woman’s Party Museum in Washington, DC: http://www.sewallbelmont.org/

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