Woman Suffrage Procession Anniversary

The “Woman Suffrage Procession” was the first suffragist parade in Washington, DC. Organized by the suffragist Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, it saw thousands of suffragists marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC on Monday, March 3, 1913. Presaging the circumstances surrounding the 2017 Women’s March just over 100 years later, the 1913 event was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” as the official program stated. While studying in England, Paul had heard the British suffragist Christabel Pankhurst speak and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, being jailed a number of times in the process. She returned to the US in 1910 and continued to campaign for women’s rights leading to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.