Woman Suffrage Procession (1913 : Washington, D.C.)

The Woman Suffrage Procession, also called the Woman Suffrage Parade, of 1913, was the first suffragist parade in Washington, D.C. and also the first large organized march on Washington for political purposes. It was organized by suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. During this event, scheduled to precede the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson by one day, thousands of suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on Monday, March 3, 1913.

Paul believed it was time to add a visual element to the campaign. Paul and Burns recruited Crystal Eastman, Mary Ritter Beard, Dora Lewis, Emma Gillette, Belva Lockwood, and Helen Hamilton Gardener and was aided by local Washington, DC suffragists, Florence Etheridge and Elsie Hill. Hazel MacKaye was asked to design professional floats. The parade organizers originally wanted to include Black Women marching alongside the others but ultimately decided on a segregated march. Two groups from Howard University, including the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

The procession was led by Jane Walker Burleson and Inez Milholland on horseback. There was an allegorical tableaux on the Treasury Building's steps pageant written by Hazel MacKaye and directed by Glenna Smith Tinnin. Among the notable participants were Mary Church Terrell, Dr. Nellie V. Mark, Jeannette Rankin, Charlotte Anita Whitney, Mary Ware Dennett, Susan Walker Fitzgerald, Katherine Dexter McCormick, Harriet Burton Laidlaw, Abby Scott Baker, Dorothy Bernard, Jane Delano, Lavinia Dock, Fola La Follette, Lillian Wald, Ellen Spencer Mussey, Mary Johnston, Estelle Willoughby Ions, Elizabeth Thacher Kent, Julia Lathrop, Annie Jenness Miller, Genevieve Clark Thomson, Harriet Taylor Upton, and Florence Fleming Noyes. There was not enough security and the police did not clear the route leaving some chaos. 200 people needed to be treated for injuries after trampling. The final act of the parade was a meeting at the Memorial Continental Hall. Speakers were Anna Howard Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, Mary Johnston, and Helen Keller.

The demonstration on Pennsylvania Avenue was the beginning of Alice Paul's other high-profile events that eventually culminated in the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote in 1920.