Suffragist Movement
in United States of America

Victoria Woodhull addresses the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing that women have the right to vote under the 14th Amendment. The committee rejects her argument.

The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded. Many people, including prominent women, such as Ellen Sherman, wife of General William Tecumseh Sherman, challenged the notion of suffrage as a “natural right,” and opposed its extension to women. In their view, women’s political participation threatened their important roles as wives, mothers, educators, and philanthropists.

Focuses on lobbying for a federal constitutional amendment to secure the national right to vote for women.

Alice Paul and her colleagues rename the Congressional Union the National Woman's Party (NWP) and began introducing some of the methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain. Tactics include demonstrations, parades, mass meetings, and picketing the White House over the refusal of President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent Democrats to actively support the Suffrage Amendment.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” and that right may not be “denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States.”

Senator S.C. Pomeroy of Kansas introduces a federal women’s suffrage amendment in Congress. It is rejected.

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified: “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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) is organized.

Mabel Vernon and Sara Bard Field lead a transcontinental tour which gathers over 500,000 signatures on petitions to Congress in favor of women’s suffrage.

Picketers are arrested on charges of “obstructing traffic,” during a demonstration. Alice Paul and others are convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. While imprisoned, Alice Paul begins a hunger strike and is forcibly fed a mixture of eggs and milk for nutrition.