The 1913 Women s Suffrage Parade marches down Pennsylvania Avenue, in view of the Capitol Building (Credit: Library of Congress)
In 1912, the women’s suffrage movement, founded almost 60 years before by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had reached a stalemate. The largest suffrage association, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, or NAWSA, was working at a state level: traveling state to state and lobbying for changes to state constitutions. Six Western states had granted female suffrage before 1912, and five states would grant women s suffrage in 1912 and 1913.
[1] However, the debate over women’s suffrage had yet to reach the House of Representatives, and repeated petitions presented in Washington by delegations of suffragettes had achieved no action.