CELEBRATE THE LEAGUE BIRTHDAY!

Adapted from information on the LWVUS website and from LWVWA

Judy A Hedden, LWVWA, Past President 2001-2003

January 2002

The official birthday of the League of Women Voters is February 14, 1920. LWV is an outgrowth of the suffragist movement. Carrie Chapman Catt founded the organization in 1920 during the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This Victory Convention was held only six months before the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote after a 57-year struggle. The League of Women Voters of Washington was organized the same year. Seattle and Tacoma were the first two local Leagues in the state. 

When Catt, a feminist who had been a dynamic leader in the suffragist movement, first wrote of how she envisioned the League in April 1919, she characterized it as "a union of all intelligent forces within the state" to attack "illiteracy, social evils, industrial ills." She added, "The politicians used to ask us why we wanted the vote. They seemed to think that we want to do something particular with it, something we were not telling about. They did not understand that women wanted to help make the general welfare."

Helping to "make the general welfare" was the primary agenda of the new League. During its first conventions, delegates voted 69 separate items as a statement of principle and recommendations for legislation. Most of the items were what we might call "family issues" today. They were important to the League, because leaders saw their enactment into law, along with enfranchisement, as critical to the independence of women. Among them were support for collective bargaining, child labor laws, minimum wage, a joint federal-state employment service, compulsory education, and equal opportunity for women in government industry. Many of these items were enacted into laws that are still in force today. They have been part of American life for so many years most of us take them for granted. But more than 81 years ago, the League's struggle for legislation to improve the quality of life for Americans was a long and arduous one.

We as current League members strive on that same long and arduous struggle to build better communities. We are carrying the legacy of the courageous suffragists and past League members who have accomplished so much for our democracy. LetŐs celebrate the people in the past who made us what we are today, the people in the present who give so much to our goals, and the people of the future who will continue in this struggle.

Posted 3/2/02

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