By 1900, the suffragists had made little impact:
- Old splits in the organisations for greater rights for women had not entirely healed.
- The Southern organisations were unwilling to give African American women the vote.
- There was not complete agreement about which types of women should be eligible to vote.
- While progress had been made and groups had organised, opposition had been built up and was quite vociferous.
- The movement was distracted by other causes, like temperance.
- The links with temperance were seen by some as ‘too Protestant’.
In the 1900s, the US movement was influenced by the British suffragettes.
Under Harriet Stanton Batch there were public parades and more links with trade unions in the USA.
In 1913, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed the more militant Congressional Union, which was renamed the National Women’s Party in 1916.
- The Congressional Union (CU/CUWS) staged a suffrage parade in March of 1913, right before President Wilson’s inauguration as opposition to a clearly anti-women’s suffrage president.
- There were c. 5-10k marchers.
- Black men and women were included in the march, but segregated.
- Instead of supporting and endorsing the war effort like Carrie Chapman Catt with the NAWSA did, suffrage was its main concern and the be all and end all.
- Inez Milholland heading the march on a white horse. Dubbed the ‘most beautiful’ suffragette.
- The British Suffragettes
The Impact of WW1 on women’s suffrage
The First World War (1914-19, but affecting the USA from 1917) offered opportunities for women to gain rights.
- The leader of the NAWSA, Carrie Chapman Catt, insisted that the promise of suffrage would induce women to support the war effort wholeheartedly, and President Wilson agreed.
