Mass Suffrage Meeting In Washington Hears Noted British Suffragist
A mass suffrage meeting in Washington, DC, on this day heard an address by the British suffragist leader Emmeline Pethick Lawrence.
The meeting was also the occasion to welcome back to Washington leaders of the American Congressional Union, the principal lobbying organization for a suffrage amendment to the Constitution. The Congressional Union leaders had just returned from a lobbying trip through western states in the U.S.
As part of her suffrage campaign, Paul founded the National Woman’s Party on March 3, 1917.
The American Congressional Union was led by Alice Paul, who then led militant suffrage pickets of the White House in 1917, which played a major role on causing President Woodrow Wilson to end his opposition to women’s suffrage (January 9, 1918). The continued protests organized by Alice Paul also pressured Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote (August 18, 1920).
Women voted in national elections for the first time on November 2, 1920.
Learn more: Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World (1938)
Read a biography of Alice Paul: Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2010)
Learn more: Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights (1998)
Learn more about marching on Washington: Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (2002)