Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch - Suffrage Campaigns

Suffrage Campaigns

On returning to the United States in 1902, Blatch sought to reinvigorate the American women's suffrage movement, which had stagnated. She initially joined the leadership of the Women's Trade Union League. In 1907, she founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (later renamed the Women's Political Union), to recruit working class women into the suffrage movement. The core membership of the league comprised 20,000 factory, laundry, and garment workers from the Lower East Side of New York City. Through this group, Blatch organized and led the 1910 New York suffrage parade. Blatch succeeded in mobilizing many working-class women, even as she continued to collaborate with prominent society women. She could organize militant street protests while still working expertly in backroom politics to neutralize the opposition of Tammany Hall politicians who feared the women would vote for prohibition.

The Union achieved significant political strength, and actively lobbied for a New York state constitutional amendment to give women the vote, which was achieved in 1917 after Tammany Hall relaxed its opposition. In 1915, Blatch's Women's Political Union merged with Alice Paul and Lucy Burns' Congressional Union, which eventually became the National Woman's Party.