by Sharon Mazaka

Created on: September 29, 2008

U.S.A Women's Suffrage

Women's Suffrage: The right of women to share on equal terms with men, the political privileges afforded by representive government and more particulary,the right for women to vote in elections and referendums and to hold public office.

July 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, the battle for women's right to vote officially began at the Seneca Falls Women's Right's Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton a brilliant abolitionist organized the event. She put together a list of complaints designed to prove history was a record of men's injustices toward women. This document was called the Declaration of Sentiments, when this was adopted; the women's right to vote was launched.

After the Civil War in 1869, feminist became outraged when Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment protected the right for black men to vote and Congress discussed the possibility of a Sixteenth Amendment for the right for women's suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony (a suffragette) refused to endorse the amendment because it did not give women the
ballot. On February 18, 1890, the two feminist leaders merged with Alice Stone Blackwell and her organinization, the American Women Suffrage Association, and created the (NAWSA) the National American Women Suffrage Association. The (NAWSA) was an organization created to gain the privileges for women to vote. . They believed the best method to obtain a federal women's suffrage amendment was with just one national amendment.

As the pioneer suffragist began to withdraw from the NAWSA because of old age, Susa B Anthony chooses suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt to be her successor, despite that Anna Howard Shaw (a prominent leader) wanted the role. Catt served for four years; from 1900 to 1904.Shaw took her place and served as president from 1904 to 1915.

Activist Alice Paul a member of the NAWSA, believed the continued work on state by state campaigns were a waste of time. Alice Paul along with activist Lucy Burns moved to Washington D.C. to work for a passage of a federal constitution amendment. Paul was skillful at keeping the issue of suffrage in the news. As chair of the Congressional Committee, she raised enough money to open an office in Washington D.C. and finance a parade to coincide with the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.

On March, 3, 1913, one day before Wilson's inauguration eight to ten thousand women and men marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. An estimated of five hundred people watched as a rowdy

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