September 23, 1923: National Women’s Party Celebrates Its Legacy, Vows to Move Forward at Colorado
September 23, 1923: National Women’s Party Celebrates Its Legacy, Vows to Move Forward at Colorado Pageant
Schoolgirls holding up the purple, white and gold banners of the National Woman’s Party at the pageant earlier today. Newsreel camera operators and photographers are in the trench in front of the banners, with some TWENTY THOUSAND onlookers, at the Garden of the Gods.
Anyone who thinks the National Woman’s Party must have lost some of its drive or militance after finishing its part of the campaign to put the Susan B. Anthony (now the 19th) Amendment into the Constitution on August 26, 1920, clearly wasn’t at today’s colorful pageant in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Meeting over the weekend, the party celebrated 75 years of feminist progress, while making it clear that the battle for total equality is far from over.
Ava Belmont, President of the National Woman’s Party, let it be known at a banquet last night that the suffrage amendment was just one stepping stone on the path to equality, and that it’s time for women to assume political leadership:
For twenty centuries men have been running the world. Now it is time for women to take over affairs, and as they very nearly hold a balance of political power at this time, the day may not be as far distant as old party leaders imagine when there will be set up a woman’s government by women for women, children and humanity in general.
Plans were announced in April to set up a separate “Women’s Congress” in Washington, D.C., possibly as early as December, to debate the same issues as those of the U.S. Congress, so that women’s views could be made known. There is presently only one woman in Congress, Rep. Mae Ella Nolan, Republican of California. The National Woman’s Party may also become a formal political party with its own candidates and platform.
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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/09/23/september-23-1923-national-womens-party-celebrates-its-legacy-vows-to-move-forward-at-colorado-pageant/
