Suffragist: The Making of a Militant

Abstract

The Suffragist newspaper performed several important functions for its publisher, the National Woman's Party, which picketed the White House in 1917 to protest for votes for women. The newspaper gave women a voice, offered them community, kept the suffrage issue alive during wartime, legitimized the demand for a federal suffrage amendment, and advanced the NWP viewpoint regarding the controversial pickets. Suffragist became more militant as suppression of the pickets intensified and was a key factor in the NWP's eventual successful confrontation with the White House and American patriarchal political power. This early example of the twentieth-century feminist press used vivid and impassioned reporting, dramatic photographs, righteous editorials, republican rhetoric, clever illustrations, and emotional first-person accounts by imprisoned suffrage pickets to make its case.