From the colonial period forward, women, with or without the vote, had been involved in politics. Women supported or opposed the Revolution through their toil, words, and sacrifices. Women who owned property could vote in a few states for a while. But even without the franchise, women attended rallies, created organizations that aimed at helping underprivileged women and children, and joined reform movements that ranged from abolishing alcohol to ending the scourge of slavery. In 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first female candidate for president, although she was arrested for trying to cast a vote for herself. The Prohibition Party actually included women at their conventions.

The National Woman’s Party (NWP) had its origins in 1912 when Lucy Burns and Alice Paul were appointed to the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s congressional committee. These two women had firsthand experience with the successful use of aggressive tactics such as picketing and public marches by the British suffrage movement and wanted to adopt many of those radical approaches in the United States. In 1914, Alice Paul led a breakaway movement from the NAWSA to form the Congressional Union to pressure the Democratic Party to secure women’s right to vote. In 1916, the CU was renamed the National Woman’s Party. In June of that year, Paul and a group of like-minded women organized at Chicago’s Blackstone Theatre with the goal of creating the first women’s political party. Their intention was to distinguish themselves from the existing political parties, and they adopted a platform of one plank: the immediate passage of a federal woman’s suffrage amendment. In 1920, their objective was achieved, with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment.