National American Woman Suffrage Association

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The NAWSA continued the work of both associations by becoming the parent organization of hundreds of smaller local and state groups, and by helping to pass woman suffrage legislation at the state and local level. The NAWSA was the largest and most important suffrage organization in the United States, and was the primary promoter of women's right to vote. Like AWSA and NWSA before it, the NAWSA pushed for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's voting rights, and was instrumental in winning the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920.

Susan B. Anthony was the dominant figure in NAWSA from 1890 to 1900, at which time she stepped down in favor of Carrie Chapman Catt. Catt was president of NAWSA from 1900 to 1904 and again from 1915 onward. Anna Howard Shaw was president of NAWSA from 1904 to 1915. After success in 1920, the NAWSA was reformed as the League of Women Voters, which continues the legacy.

Read more about National American Woman Suffrage Association:  Background Conflict, Merger, Gaining The Vote, Presidents of The NAWSA

Famous quotes containing the words national, american, woman, suffrage and/or association:

    The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador’s chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens.... Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians ... have attempted to exploit it.
    Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)

    The woman is the home. That’s where she used to be, and that’s where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home—will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because then he becomes one of the children.
    Marguerite Duras (b. 1914)

    ... the most important effect of the suffrage is psychological. The permanent consciousness of power for effective action, the knowledge that their own thoughts have an equal chance with those of any other person ... this is what has always rendered the men of a free state so energetic, so acutely intelligent, so powerful.
    Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)

    They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)