What was the significance of holding a massive parade in Washington, D.C. Why did the suffragists hold it on that particular day?

Suffrage Petitioners' Automobile Parade to the U.S. Senate, Hyattsville, MD, July 31, 1913

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Records of the National Woman's Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Senator George Chamberlain (D-OR) was a vocal proponent of the woman suffrage movement, sponsoring the 1914 bill to amend the Constitution. To approve the woman suffrage amendment, the Constitution required that two-thirds of senators present vote in its favor. On March 19, 1914, the tally fell short of that threshold by 11 votes, with 35 senators voting aye, and 34 senators voting nay.

At the Capitol, women crowded into narrow Senate corridors as the carefully planned “Siege of the Senate” began. In the Marble Room, an ornate meeting area near the Senate Chamber, they jostled for space to present petitions bearing more than 75,000 signatures to their senators. When the Senate convened a short while later, senators who supported suffrage rights quickly took to the floor and introduced petitions for women of their home states. Giving women the vote, Reed Smoot of Utah observed reassuringly, “has made no daughter less beautiful, no wife less devoted, no mother less inspiring.” Even senators opposed to female suffrage, feeling pressure from the lady lobbyists, offered petitions. “I wish to say that I am opposed to the passage of the amendment,” explained John Thornton of Louisiana, before obediently submitting a petition. “Whatever may be my personal view on this matter,” James Martine of New Jersey confessed, “I would be a veritable coward [should] I not present this petition.” Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate’s Committee on Woman Suffrage, implored his colleagues to consider the suffrage issue “with [an] unbiased mind, free from prejudice or passion.”

On March 3, 1913, after months of strategic planning and controversy, thousands of women gathered in Washington D.C. for the Women’s Suffrage Parade—the first mass protest for a woman’s right to vote.

The parade was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson‘s inauguration, ensuring there would be maximum attention on its message. And though the parade’s organizers asked participating Black women like Ida B. Wells-Barnett to walk in the back (they said no), and violence against the protestors was ignored by attending police officers, the high-profile march was celebrated as a success by its organizers.

Learn how this protest for the right to vote became a pivotal step towards the August 18, 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment with this 2019 TED-Ed by Michelle Mehrtens, directed by WOW-HOW Studio.

More from National Geographic:

On August 26, 1920, the U.S. Secretary of State certified that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution had been ratified by the required 36 states. It became the law of the land: “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 sex.”

The 19th Amendment did not, however, guarantee any woman the vote. Instead, laws reserving the ballot for men became unconstitutional. Women would still have to navigate a maze of state laws—based upon age, citizenship, residency, mental competence, and more—that might keep them from the polls.

That “more” includes barriers for women of color. Related reading: Five You Should Know: African American Suffragists, a list from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Also: Smithsonian Magazine’s The Original Women’s March on Washington and the Suffragists Who Paved the Way.

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Crowd converging on marchers and blocking parade route during March 3, 1913, inaugural suffrage procession, Washington, D.C.

Leet Brothers, photographer. National Woman's Party Records, Library of Congress

“The women’s suffrage party had a hard time settling the status of Negroes in the Washington parade. At first, Negro callers were received coolly at headquarters. Then they were told to register, but found that the registry clerks were usually out. Finally, an order went out to segregate them in the parade, but telegrams and protests poured in and eventually the colored women marched according to their State and occupation without let or hindrance.” The Crisis, vol 5, no. 6, April 1913, page 267.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett traveled to Washington, D.C. with the Illinois delegation and fully expected to march with them. As the group was lining up to begin the procession, the white suffrage leaders suddenly asked Wells-Barnett not to march with her fellow suffragists from Illinois and instead assume a place in the back of the procession. Wells-Barnett refused and left the area. Instead, she waited along the side of Pennsylvania Avenue until the Illinois group marched by. Then she and two white allies stepped in front of the Illinois delegation and continued in the procession.

Although it is sometimes reported that African American women marched in the back of the procession, The Crisis reported that more than forty Black women processed in their state delegations or with their respective professions. Two were reported to have carried the lead banners for their sections. Twenty-five students from Delta Sigma Theta sorority from Howard University marched in cap and gown with the university women, as did six graduates of universities, including Mary Church Terrell.

"In spite of the apparent reluctance of the local suffrage committee to encourage the colored women to participate," reported The Crisis, "and in spite of the conflicting rumors that were circulated and which disheartened many of the colored women from taking part, they are to be congratulated that so many of them had the courage of their convictions and that they made such an admirable showing in the first great national parade.”

New York Evening Journal, March 4, 1913, p. 3 (N&CPR). Back to text
Suffrage Parade, Senate Hearing, March 6-17, 1913, p. 70 (JK1888 1913b GenColl; MicRR; RBSC NAWSA; LAW). Back to text
There is disagreement about the number of marchers. The New York Times, March 4, 1913, p. 4 (N&CPR), said 5,000. Inez Haynes Irwin, The Story of the Woman's Party (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1921; JK1901 .I7 GenColl ), 29, says 8,000. Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920; JK1901.S85 GenColl), 22, says 10,000. For a full-text version of Jailed for Freedom, see “Marching for the Vote” on the Topical Essays External Sites page Back to text
Procession details from throughout the Official Program: Woman Suffrage Procession (MSS, P&P, RBSC, MicRR); the quotation is from p. 2. The Library's copies of the program have different numbers of pages. All citations in this essay are from the copy in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Back to text
Suffrage Parade, 27, 68, 70. Back to text
Ibid., 94. Back to text
Ibid., 70, 59, 329. Back to text
Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1913, p. 2 (N&CPR). Back to text
Washington Post, March 4, 1913, p. 10 (N&CPR). Back to text
Suffrage Parade, testimony of Secretary Stimson, 120. Back to text
For a full description of the Allegory, with descriptions of costumes, props, and music, see the Official Program (RBSC), pp. 14, 16. The full program is available on the Library's American Memory Web site [full item]. The records of the National Woman's Party (described in the Manuscript Division's Women's Suffrage section) contain more than fifteen hundred items relating to the parade and its aftermath. All of the parade's many logistical details are documented, including efforts to recruit organizers, secure speakers, obtain permits, assemble the programs, invite members of Congress, and more. Back to text
New York Times, March 4, 1913, p. 4 (N&CPR). Back to text
Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (1926 RBSC NAWSA; reprint, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969; JK1896.C3 1969 Gen-Coll), 242. Irwin, The Story, 30, and Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 21, both say it was Wilson himself who asked the question as he drove through empty streets to his hotel. For a full-text version of Jailed for Freedom, see “Marching for the Vote” on the Topical Essays External Sites page. Presidential inaugurations were held on March 4 until the Twentieth Amendment (1933) changed the date to January 20. Back to text
Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, enl. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996; HQ1410.F6 1996 Gen-Coll), 255. Back to text
National Party Platforms, compiled by Donald Bruce Johnson, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1978; JK2255.J64 1978 GenColl), 1: 176. Back to text
Irwin, The Story, 8-11. Back to text
Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, 241. Back to text
Irwin, The Story, 18. Back to text
Ibid., 19. Back to text
Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975; HA202.B87 1975 MRR Ref Desk and other locations), 1: 168. Back to text
National American Woman Suffrage Association, Forty-fifth Annual Report (New York: NAWSA, 1913; JK1881.N28 45th 1913 GenColl), 67. Back to text
Votes for Women Inaugural Parade, broadside, National Woman's Party, Records, Group I, box 14, “NWP Leaflets and Broadsides” (MSS). Back to text
Woman Voter and the Newsletter, 4: 3 (March 1913), p. 10 (JK1880 .W55 GenColl). Back to text
Ibid., p. 10. Back to text
The Library of Congress has preserved a print of the film, but unfortunately no known copies of the sound recording survive. Votes for Women, AFI/Tayler Collection (FEA 9595), Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1913; 1 reel, 368 ft., si., originally produced with sound recording on a cylinder; (the LC copy lacks the cylinder), 35mm ref. print (MBRS). Variety, April 11, 1913, p. 6 (microfilm 03722, MicRR, MBRS). Back to text
Officers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to The Honorable Woodrow Wilson, February 12, 1913, in the National Woman's Party Records, Group I, box 2, “February 11-13, 1913.” This letter states that it was to be “borne” by the hikers to Wilson, but the presence of the signed original in the National Woman's Party Records indicates that it was never delivered. There is no copy in the Woodrow Wilson Papers (MSS). Although they did not present the letter, the suffragists did indeed focus their attention on President Wilson, and when he refused to join their cause, they began to picket the White House. Silent women holding banners stood outside the president's home every day, twenty-four hours a day, for eight months. The pickets endured taunts, arrests, and imprisonment but never faltered. It was still to take until January 1918 before Wilson joined the suffrage bandwagon. Back to text
Woman Voter and the Newsletter, 4:3 (March 1913), p. 10. Back to text
Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 23 (for a full-text version of Jailed for Freedom, see “Marching for the Vote” on the Topical Essays External Sites page). Anna Howard Shaw, president of NAWSA, complained that Paul's group had not told her of the meeting and so she did not attend (Ida Husted Harper, Scrapbooks, XI [JK1899.H4 RBSC], p. 31). Alice Paul and her Washington supporters were soon to establish their own, independent suffrage party, the National Woman's Party, to work solely on the passage of a constitutional amendment. Back to text
Woman's Journal and Suffrage News, March 8, 1913, p. 1 (RBSC-NAWSA, MicRR). Back to text
New York Tribune, March 8, 1913, p. 3 (N&CPR); Harper, Scrapbook, XI (RBSC), p. 28. Back to text
NAWSA, Forty-fifth Annual Report, 17. Back to text
New York Evening Journal, March 3, 1913, p. 3 (N&CPR). Back to text
Both cartoons were reproduced in Cartoons Magazine, 3:4 (April 1913), p. 216 (LC-USZ62-55985 P&P). Back to text
Many cartoons appear in newspapers, books, and articles in the General Collections and N&CPR. Life (1883-1936; AP101.L6 GenColl) is a rich source. For a collection of suffrage cartoons, see Alice Sheppard, Cartooning for Suffrage (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994; NC1425.S54 1994 GenColl). Back to text
Yidishes Tageblatt, March 4, 1913, p. 8 (AMED-Hebr). Back to text
Robert S. Gallagher, “I Was Arrested, of Course,” American Heritage, 25:2 (February 1974), p. 20 (E171.A43 GenColl). Back to text
Ibid., 20. Back to text
See the Records of the National Woman's Party (Group I, boxes 1-3) for correspondence on the role of African American women in the parade (MSS). See also Crisis, 5:6 (April 1913), p.267; reprint ed. (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969; E185.5.C9 GenColl). For Wells Barnett, see the Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1913, p.2 (N&CPR). Additional sources of material on African American women and the march include the aforementioned records of the National Woman's Party and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (both collections are described in the Manuscript Division's Women's Suffrage section). Back to text