Founded in 1913 by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, and initially called the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, the National Woman's Party was the most militant and creative of the organizations fighting for votes for women. In its first years it was part of the much larger National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but soon there was tension over strategy, tactics, and finances. A year later the CU split from NAWSA. You will read issues of The Suffragist, the weekly newspaper published by CU/NWP to see how the newspaper articulate the goals and strategies of the organization in its early years. The assignment has three parts: (1) Choose a research question and read relevant issues of The Suffragist (2) Read one of the books recommended below; (3) Write a 8-10 page paper about one of these research questions.

Research questions (3 options):

a) How did The Suffragist explain the goals and strategies of the organization? These changed over the years notably in 1916 when the National Woman's Party was launched and in 1917 when the organized picketing despite World War I laws against sedition.

b) How did The Suffragist explain the tensions between the CU and NAWSA and handle the breakup that was finalized in February 1914? This requires finding 1914 issues (Vol 2)

c) Evaluate the journalistic and persuasive tools of The Suffragist including its use of art.

Primary source research (newspapers):

1) Begin by downloading this research database-excel-1.xlsx

2) We are using The Suffragist as the key primary source. It is available here: https://archive.org/details/thesuffragist . Read the monthly issues most relevant to your research question, looking for articles that explain or debate show what the organization advocated. To start use the menu to sort by DATE PUBLISHED. Choose a year or a sequence of monthly issues to read. When you see anything potentially interesting, download the issue as a pdf (upper left icon)

3) Fill in database and write short description of no less than 20 articles.

4) Note that the archive is not organized by date. It helps to click the DATE PUBLISHED button but even then they will be out of order. Open each issue and zoom in to see date of publication.

Screenshot suffragist1.png

Secondary source research (books):

4) Obtain and read one or more books.

Alice Paul, the National Woman's Party and the vote : the first civil rights struggle of the 20th century

by Bernadette Cahill

Iron-Jawed Angels : the suffrage militancy of the National Woman's Party, 1912-1920
byLinda Ford

From equal suffrage to equal rights : Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, 1910-1928
by Christine A. Lunardini,