The national women’s suffrage movement
began in 1848 and had gained a substantial following by 1916.With the approach of the First World War, many
of the activists in the National American Woman Suffrage Association turned to
either pacifism or to support for American preparedness.The more radical National Woman’s Party,
created by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns in 1916, continued to focus on winning the
vote for women.Lucy Burns and Alice
Paul were activists, suffragists and good friends. Lucy
Burns had attended Vassar College and Yale University, and Alice Paul had
attended Swarthmore College and earned her PhD from the University of
Pennsylvania. The pair was despised by men, and conservative
women opposed them.
The National
Woman’s Party felt betrayed by Woodrow Wilson.The women believed that Woodrow Wilson had made a commitment to support
a suffrage amendment in his campaign for a second Presidential term. When,
after his second inauguration in 1917, Wilson
did not fulfill this promise, Paul organized picketing of the White House.This was unprecedented.Never before had anyone protested in front of
the White House.Some considered the
action nothing short of treason.A woman
in New York wrote a letter to the editor calling picketing of the White House,
“a menace to the life of the President--a silent invitation to the assassin.”Undeterred,
suffragistdemonstrators carried banners
quoting Wilson’s
own speeches,"We shall
fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for
democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in
their own governments."
On January 9, 1918, President
Wilson announced support for a Constitutional Amendment to allow women’s
suffrage.To keep up the pressure, suffragist
protestors resumed picketing the White House.Paul urged men to vote against anti-suffrage Congressmen in the November
1918 elections.After the election, most
re-elected members of Congress were pro-suffrage.Approved by the House of Representatives and
the Senate, and ratified by the requisite thirty six states, the Nineteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits denying any citizen the right to vote because of
that citizen's sex, was ratified on August 18, 1920.
On May 16, 2021
the “Turning Point Suffragist Memorial” was dedicated to honor the millions of
women who worked for more than seven decades to win the vote:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.