Origins In the NAWSA Congressional Committee
When we look back at Women's marches of the past, we find the origins of the National Woman's Party (NWP) date from December 1912, when Alice Paul (1885-1977) and Lucy Burns (1879-1966) were appointed to the National American Woman Suffrage Association's (NAWSA) languishing Congressional Committee.
Paul and Burns were young, well-educated Americans who worked with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in the militant wing of the British suffrage movement. Radicalized by their experiences in England, which included violent confrontations with authorities, jail sentences, hunger strikes, and force-feeding, they sought to inject a renewed militancy into the American campaign. They also endeavored to shift NAWSA's attention away from winning voting rights for women to the state and local levels to securing an amendment to the US Constitution to enfranchise women nationally.
Their first activity on NAWSA's behalf was to organize a massive national suffrage parade in WAshington, DC, in March 1913. This parade was modeled on the elaborate suffrage pageants held in Britain and local marches organized in New York by the Women's Political Union (WPU) and its leader Harriot Stanton Blatch (18596-1940). Blatch, the daughter of Elizabeth Lady Stanton (1815-1902), married an Englishman and became active int he militant British suffrage campaign. She supported NAWSA's appointment of Paul and Burns, who shared her enthusiasm for British inspired tactics.
The March 3, 1913, parade coincided with President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration and put the president-elect and Congress on notice that NAWSA would hold the Democratic Party responsible if it failed to pass a women's suffrage amendment. Bands, floats, and more than 8,000 marchers participated, representing nearly every state and most occupations.
Crowds of men mobbed the parade route, some of them threatening, injuring the marching women, despite assurances of police protection. The police declined to intervene, and the public outcry was intense. Even NAWSA officials, leery of Paul's affiliation with British suffragettes, conceded afterwards that the parade and ensuing police debacle "...done more for suffrage, to establish firmly those who were wavering, and to bring to our ranks thousands of others who would never have taken any interest in it.
Despite the publicity that such events generated, Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919) and later Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947), as presidents of NAWSA, remained skeptical. They feared that militant tactics would endanger state victories, antagonize congress, and make it difficult to gain widespread support for ratifying women's voting rights if a federal amendment were passed by Congress.
Why were they marching back then?
Because this was the most conspicuous and important demonstration that had ever been attempted by suffragists in this country.
Because this parade would be taken to indicate the importance of the suffrage movement by the press of the country and the thousands of spectators from all over the Untied States gathered in Washington for the Inauguration.
A very interesting mention of this 1913 Women's March:
"This call was answered. On February 12 (1913), with cameras clicking, sixteen 'suffrage pilgrims' left New York City to walk to Washington for the parade [picture]. Many other people joined the original marchers at various stages, and the New York State Woman Suffrage Association's journal crowed that 'no propaganda work undertaken by the State Association and the Party has ever achieved such publicity.' One of the New York group, Elizabeth Freeman, dressed as a gypsy and drove a yellow, horse-drawn wagon decorated with Votes for Women symbols and filled with suffrage literature, a sure way to attract publicity. Two weeks after the procession, five New York suffragists, including Elizabeth Freeman, reported to the Bronx motion picture studio of the Thomas A. Edison Company to make a talking picture known as a Kinetophone, which included a cylinder recording of one-minute speeches by each of the women. This film with synchronized sound was shown in vaudeville houses where it was 'hooted, jeered and hissed' by audiences."
The NAWSA officers prepared a strong letter to the president-elect for the "New York hikers" to carry to Washington. The letter urged that women's suffrage be achieved during this presidency and warned that the women of the Untied States would watch your administration with and intense interest such as has never before been focused upon the administration of any of your predecessors. But despite the tone of the letter, when the group reached Princeton, where Woodrow Wilson lived, they requested only and audience for not more than two minutes in Washington as son after his arrival as possible.
It was less than two weeks after his inauguration,Wilson received a suffrage delegation led by Alice Paul, who chose to make the case for suffrage verbally and apparently did not deliver the hikers' letter. In response to the women's impassioned plea, he replied that he had never given the subject any thought, but that it would receive his most careful consideration. This was hardly the wholehearted endorsement sought by the women.
[See more: Marching For the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913.]
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