Equal Rights, Vol. 1 No. 25.
[Suffrage]. National Woman’s Party. Equal Rights. The Official Weekly of the National Woman’s Party. Vol. I, No. 25. August 4, 1923.
2 folio leaves; folded and stapled; front panel illustrated; creased and lightly darkened, else fine.
An original issue from its inaugural year; published by The National Woman’s Party (NWP), an outgrowth of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which gained attention for their militant tactics, similar to those of the British Women’s Social and Political Union, including parades, speeches, and holding the party in power responsible for its leaders’ failure to adopt a women’s suffrage amendment. Led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, the Party focused its attentions on securing a federal amendment for women’s suffrage. The Party’s most notable occurred in 1913, during a parade of five thousand women, which the NWP and NAWSA organized and which upstaged the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson and sparked a riot among the spectators who sympathized with the marchers. The political and emotional force created by the boisterous march continued through the spring in the forms of mass petitions and suffragist pilgrimages to the Capitol to deliver such petitions. In all, two hundred thousand signatures were collected. The NWP’s peeked between 1919 and 1921, with a membership nearing sixty thousand women. However, after the passage of the 19th Amendment, its affiliation drastically declined to 151 paid members.
Equal Rights, coming in the wake of women’s suffrage and the inevitable decline of support, reflects the Party’s earnest, yet modest, commitment to rights of women. In part:
[Regarding the Civil Service Commission] These tests are applicable to men and women alike, and those who qualify are places on registers to be appointed as the needs of the service require, but under the law the appointing officers can state whether they want a man or a woman, in calling for eligible. Now practically all of the appointing officers are men, and experience shows that where appointments are to be made to higher grades of work the officers usually call for men, thereby defeating the rights of such women as have qualified for these higher rights...The women are unfairly denied these positions because the appointing officer can, under the present law, designate sex in calling for the appointees.
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