page_title: Woman Suffrage Procession
section_title: Anti-black racism
hierarchical_section_title: Woman Suffrage Procession / Anti-black racism
caption_attribution_description: English: Ida B. Wells at 1913 suffrage parade, in Chicago Daily Tribune May 1913
context_page_description: The Woman Suffrage Procession, in 1913, was the first suffragist parade in Washington, D.C. It was also the first large, organized march on Washington for political purposes. The procession was organized by the suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Planning for the event began in Washington in December 1912. The parade's purpose, stated in its official program, was to "march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded."
  Participation numbers vary between 5,000 and 10,000 marchers. Suffragists and supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on Monday, March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Paul had selected the venue and date to maximize publicity, but met resistance from the D.C. police department. The demonstration consisted of a procession with floats, bands, and various groups representing women at home, in school, and in the workplace. At the Treasury Building, a pageant of allegorical tableaux was acted out during the parade.
context_section_description: The woman's suffrage movement, led in the nineteenth century by stalwart women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had its genesis in the abolitionist movement, but by the dawn of the twentieth century, Anthony's goal of universal suffrage was eclipsed by a near-universal racism in the United States. While earlier suffragists had believed the two issues could be linked, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment forced a division between African American rights and suffrage for women. In 1903, the NAWSA officially adopted a platform of states' rights that was intended to mollify and bring Southern U.S. suffrage groups into the fold. The statement's signers included Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw. This platform essentially nullified the issue of black rights and acknowledged that NAWSA considered (white) woman's suffrage to be the organization's primary goal.
  With the prevalence of segregation throughout the country, and within organizations such as the NAWSA, blacks had formed their own activist groups to fight for their equal rights. Many were college educated and resented their exclusion from political power. The fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 also fell in 1913, giving them even further incentive to march in the suffrage parade. Two groups from Howard University, including the new Alpha chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, requested to join, and Paul assigned them to the college section of the parade, where she and Burns planned to march. The Howard University group included the former president from the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC), Mary Church Terrell.
  Paul, like many in the NAWSA, chose expedience over equal rights in planning the parade. She discussed participation with at least one local African American in the District and had reserved space in the parade for the NACWC and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). But the Virginia-born Gardener tried to persuade Paul that including blacks would be a bad idea. Paul took Gardener's concerns seriously and considered excluding blacks from the procession. Paul had attempted to keep news about black marchers out of the press, but when the Howard group announced they intended to participate, the public became aware of the conflict. A newspaper account indicated that Paul told some black suffragists that the NAWSA believed in equal rights for "colored women", but that some Southern women were likely to object to their presence. A source in the organization insisted that the official stance was to "permit negroes to march if they cared to". In a 1974 oral history interview, Paul recalled the "hurdle" of Terrell's plan to march, which upset the Southern delegations. She said the situation was resolved when a Quaker leading the men's section proposed the men march between the Southern groups and the Howard University group.
  While in Paul's memory, a compromise was reached to order the parade as southern women, then the men's section, and finally the Negro women's section, reports in the NAACP paper, The Crisis, depict events unfolding quite differently, with black women protesting the plan to segregate them. What is clear is that some groups attempted, on the day of the parade, to segregate their delegations. For example, a last-minute instruction by the chair of the state delegation section, Genevieve Stone, caused additional uproar when she asked the Illinois delegation's sole black member, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, to march with the segregated black group at the back of the parade. Some historians claim Paul made the request. Wells-Barnett eventually rejoined the Illinois delegation as the procession moved down the avenue. In the end, black women marched in several state delegations, including New York and Michigan. Some joined in with their co-workers in the professional groups. There were also black men driving many of the floats. The spectators did not treat the black participants any different
caption: Ida B. Wells-Barnett marched with her state delegation despite being told to march with other blacks in another section.
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