The Women's Suffrage Parade

800 Words4 Pages

Women in America are not held in as high regard as men, but it was a worse situation in 1913. Women had been staging protests for the right to vote throughout the nation for 60 years. The Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913 was the first to be held in the capital. This event was a peaceful protest following the rights of the First Amendment and positively impacting society. The Women’s Suffrage Parade was vital to society both at the time it occurred and today. The Women's Suffrage Parade is a neglected but important event in American history. Without the parade and the press it received, women in today’s society might still be waiting for the right to vote. The parade was organized by Alice Paul, and designed to give it the maximum amount of …show more content…

The women involved in the Women’s Suffrage Parade were within their rights of holding a peaceful demonstration to aid their cause. However, as they planned it to be on the day president-elect Wilson was arriving in Washington, the police told them that they could not guarantee safety for the marchers. The women refused to reschedule, as lots of people would be in DC to see the president-elect and therefore more people would see the parade. 100 women were put in the hospital (Cohen), but the women knew in advance that the police did not guarantee their safety. The police ignoring the increasingly violent situation was wrong, but they did give the women a fair warning. The women used their right to freedom of speech to display large, brightly colored signs about how the fact that women do not have the right to vote is unconstitutional. The ladies were sure to stay within the boundaries of the law and remain a non-violent procession, further proving that they were peacefully protesting for their rights in the form of a …show more content…

It gave the National American Woman Suffrage Association a tremendous amount of press and spread their message farther than ever before. While there were many injuries and the crowd was not supportive of their movement, the women still got publicity and the parade became the start of an avid campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The women of NAWSA and the National Woman's Party, and the hardships their members went through, got women the vote and allowed women today to have an opinion in politics and make progress toward the end goal, equality. These ladies gave women the chance to determine the future for both themselves and generations to come. The future would be immensely different from what we have today of they were unsuccessful. Every vote since August of 1920 would change, as female votes may have altered the outcomes. Few things would be as they are today without the Women’s Suffrage Parade and the positive impact it had on the campaign for women’s suffrage. The Women’s Suffrage Parade was an extremely influential moment both then and now. Without it America would not be the same as it it today. The women protested both peacefully and meaningfully, and overall changed the way society. They took a major step towards equality for women and positively impacted