American National Women's Party

National Woman's Party

Formation	June 5, 1916 (1916-06-05)
Extinction	1997
Purpose	"To secure an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women" and to pass the ERA
Headquarters	Washington, DC
Key people	Alice Paul, Lucy Burns
Website	http://www.nationalwomansparty.org/
Formerly called	Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage

The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's organization formed in 1916 as an outgrowth of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which had been formed in 1913 by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to fight for women's suffrage. The National Woman's Party broke from the much larger National American Woman Suffrage Association, which was focused on attempting to gain women's suffrage at the state level. The National Woman's Party prioritized the passage of a constitutional amendment ensuring women's suffrage throughout the United States.

The National Woman's Party, like the Congressional Union, was under the leadership of Alice Paul, who learned from militant suffragettes in Britain who used a variety of tactics to gain publicity for the cause of suffrage. Paul's strategy was to use publicity to hold the party in power, the Democratic Party and President Woodrow Wilson, responsible for the status of woman suffrage. Starting in January 1917, NWP members known as Silent Sentinels continued their quest for equality by protesting outside the White House.

While the British suffragettes stopped their protests when Britain entered the war in 1914, and supported the British war effort, Paul remained committed to the suffrage cause and continued her campaign after the US entered the war on April 6, 1917. Members of the NWP argued it was hypocritical for the United States to fight a war for democracy in Europe while denying its benefits to half of the US population. Similar arguments were being made in Europe, where most of the allied nations of Europe had enfranchised some women or would soon.

The NWP pickets were controversial as they continued during war time. Many NWP activists were later arrested on the charge of obstructing traffic, and many went on hunger strikes in prison to protest their unlawful detention. Abusive treatment of the protesters, who believed themselves to be political prisoners, angered some Americans and created more support for the suffrage amendment. They were eventually released and their arrests were later declared unconstitutional. In the meantime, NAWSA helped pass the 1917 referendum in New York State in favor of suffrage. In early 1918, Wilson came out in favor of the amendment, and it passed the House, but failed in the Senate despite another round of protests and arrests. After the NWP helped replace anti-suffrage senators in the 1918 elections, the amendment finally passed both houses and was sent to the states for ratification. The Nineteenth amendment was ratified by enough states by 1920, thus giving many women the right to vote. Many African American women in the Jim Crow south remained disenfranchised after the ratification of this amendment.