The suffragists planned a great parade in Washington DC on March 3rd, 1913, the day before the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson to pressure the unsympathetic president to introduce the suffrage bill.
The parade was led by the flamboyant campaigner Inez Milholland in a cape and riding a
white horse.
Despite the imagery of heroic virtue, behind the scenes there were divisions over race among the campaigners.
Some white women delegates said they would not march if black women participated, so the NAWSA established a segregationist solution by having black women marching, but in their own section at the end of the parade.
- This obliged even integrated women’s suffrage organisations to ask their black members to go to the back of the march.
- Catt felt the South had to be placated with segregation:
- For example, she urged white southern women to stay away from the 1916 annual convention in Chicago because the delegates would be mainly black.