Suffragists March to Greet President Wilson
An estimated 8,000 suffragists, dressed in white and organized by Alice Paul, marched in Washington, DC, on this day, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration in support of women’s suffrage. The march drew a large crowd, including suffrage opponents who violently attacked march participants.
The march was led by Inez Milholland Boissevain riding a white horse, dressed in a white cape and wearing a crown. Angry anti-feminist groups tried to disrupt the parade at several places. The attacks prompted a Congressional investigation into the lack of police protection. A small group of suffragists later met with Wilson at the White House, on March 17, 1913, in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would grant women the right to vote.
Alice Paul intensified her militant campaign for women’s suffrage in 1917, by steadily picketing the White House. Her militancy alienated the more moderate women’s suffrage activists. She and her allies picketed the White House on January 10, 1917, and the Congress on April 2, 1917, while President Wilson gave his famous speech asking for a declaration of war. Paul was arrested for picketing on October 20, 1917, and in jail she and other suffragists conducted a hunger strike, bringing news headlines that embarrassed the president (see November 15, 1917.) The militant efforts worked, and President Wilson finally endorsed a constitutional amendment granting suffrage on January 9, 1918. The Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified on August 18, 1920, and women voted in all federal and state elections for the first time on November 2, 1920.
Milholland led suffrage parades in New York City in 1911, 1912 and 1913. In October 2016 she embarked on a grueling suffrage speaking tour what was planned to include 11 western U.S. states. She was already in bad health at the start of the tour and on October 22nd, while in the midst of a speech in Los Angeles, she collapsed. After the speech she was sent to a hospital where she died on November 25, 2016.
Alice Paul is also famous for drafting and introducing the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have granted equality to women (July 21, 1923). The ERA was voted on several times in the 1940s and 1950s, but never secured the required number of votes for a proposed Constitutional amendment. In a very different political climate, it passed Congress on March 22, 1972, and was sent to the states for ratification. After quickly securing a number of state ratifications, however, it ran into fierce neo-conservative opposition and died.
Watch a documentary of the march: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al_7f4bCfK8
Learn about Alice Paul: Jill Zahniser and Amelia Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (2014)
Read Inez Milholland’s biography: Linda J. Lumsden, Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland (2016)
Learn more about the history of women’s suffrage, from the 19th Century to the present: Ellen Carol DuBois, Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote (2020)
Read Paul’s biography: Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot (2010)
Read Paul’s Oral History interview: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c/
Learn more about marching on Washington: Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (2002)
Read a Memoir of the March: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/aw01e/aw01e.html