National Woman’s Party Formed
The National Woman’s Party was created through a merger of the Congressional Union for Woman’s Suffrage, organized as a committee of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1913, and Alice Paul’s Woman’s Party, which she had organized in June 1916.
Paul led an aggressive campaign to demand a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, which began in 1913 and intensified in 1917. On the night of April 2, 1917, Paul and her allies picketed Congress while President Woodrow Wilson was asking for a Declaration of War. On August 11, 1917, she and others picketed the White House with the inflammatory sign “Kaiser Wilson,” equating President Wilson, who had not yet supported women’s suffrage, with Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II. And on October 20, 1917, Paul was arrested for picketing the White House; while in jail, she began a highly publicized hunger strike.
Paul and the National Woman’s Party also led the fight for adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would grant equal treatment for women. Paul wrote and introduced the ERA on July 21, 1923.
Learn about Alice Paul: Jill Zahniser and Amelia Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (2014)
Read Alice Paul’s Oral History: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c/
Read: Mary Wilson, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2010)
Learn more about the National Woman’s Party: http://www.sewallbelmont.org/
See a chronology of the National Woman’s Party history: http://www.loc.gov/collections/static/women-of-protest/images/detchron.pdf