1913 Suffrage March

How Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated created, helped design & participated in the 1913 Woman's suffrage march of March 1913.

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Jane Addams, an Alpha Kappa Alpha woman and renowned civil rights activist, and social worker, played a crucial role in conceptualizing the 1913 procession and appointed Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to lead the march."

Alice Paul appointed Elsie Hill to oversee the collegiate section. Hill personally visited Howard University to invite the women there to participate in the march. However, once the Howard women & its administration accepted and the news was publicized, it sparked controversy among white women from the southern United States."
1. The theory behind this thought is that southern white women believed that if black women got the vote black women would be equal to them.
  1. This was a time when the majority of the South's population was black.
    1. In 1910 the South had 8.75 million of nation’s 9.83 million “Negroes”, an 89 percent share.

Alpha Kappa Alpha woman, Nellie Quander, president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., advocated & wrote two letters to ensure that the Howard women would be..."

a. Be able to march in the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade.

b. Ensure the safety of the “Howard women ” as they marched.

& They marched, in the collegiate section, protected by Quaker men, who were the relatives of Alice Paul. Paul herself also marched with us in the collegiate section.

The Players

Alpha Kappa Alpha woman, Jane Addams was the second woman to receive the Peace Prize. She founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919, and worked for many years to get the great powers to disarm and conclude peace agreements.

Source

Alpha Kappa Alpha woman, Nellie Quander,

Born into one of the oldest and well-documented free black families in America, Nellie May Quander was a life-long advocate for civil rights, women’s rights, social reform, and education.

Source

Alpha Kappa Alpha woman, Julia Clifford Lathrop was an activist and social reformer in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries and the first chief of the United States Children’s Bureau. Through her studies, she empirically linked poverty and lack of education with higher than normal risks of infant and maternal mortality, and her results supported legislation aimed at lowering infant and maternal mortality in the US.

Source

Alice Paul

Alice Paul, A vocal leader of the twentieth century women’s suffrage movement, Alice Paul advocated for and helped secure passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Paul next authored the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, which has yet to be adopted.

source

Elise Hill

Elise Hill, was involved in the planning of the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913, and notably reached out to African American students during the planning of that event. ... Alice Paul sent Hill on public tours to campaign in favor of women's suffrage in 1916.

Alpha Kappa Alpha women

Julia Lathrop & Jane Addams with fellow Suffragette MM. Washington, D.C. 1913

Inez Milholland

"But Milholland was as fierce as she was beautiful, demanding that Black women from Howard University be allowed to march in the parade after Paul and other White suffragists tried to turn them away. "

Image Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/history/inez-milholland-suffrage-parade-womens-rights/

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/history/inez-milholland-suffrage-parade-womens-rights/

Howard University & the Suffrage March

Mussey's address in support of women's issue at Howard.

Source: "HU Journal, Volume 10 Issue 7" (1912). Volume 10. 7.

Emma Gillett LL.D & Ellen S. Mussey LL.D

(Gillette Howard University and graduated in 1882 with an LLB, followed in 1883 with an LLM. )

Source

BACKGROUND: Mussey and Gillette created the Washington College of Law enabling more white women to practice law. Gillette having been denied entry into many law schools due to her gender earned her law degree from Howard University and often went back to her alma mater to encourage the students and staff to participate in women's rights issues.

page 67 Pauls' discussion with Fry

(Thus, in April 1898, the Washington College of Law–newly merged with American University–was incorporated in Washington, DC, as the first law school in the world founded by women. )

Black Women & their role in the Suffrage March

Black Women in the march.

Black women felt like they were under attack long before the crowds descended upon the marchers. They had to fight just to be included in the procession. As described in the NAACP's newspaper:

“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.

The LINK to the women of color reported present by the women of color who were there at the march.

Howard University's role in the Collegiate Section of the 1913 Woman's Suffrage March

Nellie's Letter 1 of 2.

Outline's Howard's desire and request to participate in the 1913 Woman's Suffrage March.

Howard's account

Outline's Howard University's participation in the Suffrage March

The Crisis Account

Outlines the names of the black women who participated in the march by section. Howard is denoted as college women bc they participated as Howard University in the Collegiate Section.

https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/0400-crisis-v05n06-w030.pdf

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