History

Our Beginnings

The League of Women Voters is an outgrowth of the suffragist movement. carries Chapman Catt founded the organization in 1920 during the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The convention was held only six months before the 19th amendment to the constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote after a 57-year struggle.

A Women’s Revolution

The League began as a “mighty political experiment” designed to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibilities as voters. It encouraged them to use their new power to participate in shaping public policy.

From the beginning, the League was an activist, grassroots organization whose leaders believed that citizens should play a critical role in advocacy. It was then, and is now, a nonpartisan organization. League founders believed that maintaining a nonpartisan status would protect the fledgling organization from becoming mired in the party politics of the day. However, League members were encouraged to be political themselves, by educating citizens about, and lobbying for, government and social reform legislation.

UNITED WE STAND

“Naturally, this course has failed to please extremists of either brand,” noted the League’s first president, Maud Wood Park, in 1924. “The partisan radicals call the League conservative, the thorough-going reactionaries are sure that it is radical or worse.” This holds true even today. We are proud that the League is nonpartisan, neither supporting nor opposing candidates at any level of government, but always working on issues of concern to members and the public. The League has a long, rich history. Read more about the League’s history on the LWVUS website.