This page is referenced by:

• 1 2023-05-27T05:19:12+00:00 Nineteenth Amendment 7 plain 2023-05-27T06:18:36+00:00 The campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment emerged from the success of the 19th amendment, and thus it was shaped to a significant degree by the circumstances and dynamics of the suffrage movement. The first — and for a time, the only — organization to champion the ERA, the National Women’s Party (NWP) was formed in 1915 from a split within the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA), following internal disagreements over tactics and strategy. NAWSA focused its efforts on lobbying politicians and educating the public on the issue of suffrage, while the NWP sought to emulate the suffragettes in the UK by employing more aggressive and emotionally evocative forms of protest, such as picketing and hunger-striking. These protests played a crucial role in generating political pressure in support of the 19th, but the NWP was consequently labeled as too militant, which made other women’s organizations hesitant to associate with them. Another unfortunate legacy of the fight for suffrage that carried over to the ERA was the racial and economic divide within the movement. The leaders of NAWSA regularly marginalized minority and working-class women to pursue the support of wealthy White southerners; prior to their split, Alice Paul and other NWP founding members were no exception, and this reputation and tendency severely affected their ability to organize mass support for the ERA in the earliest years of its campaign.