Organizing for Women’s Suffrage: The NAWSA Records

Campaign retired. All transcriptions available in LOC.gov


Completed Pages: 41,130
Registered Contributors: 3,942
Launched Aug. 11, 2020 and completed Oct. 6, 2022.

About This Campaign

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed in 1890 by the merger of two suffrage organizations, both of which originated in a volatile disagreement in 1869. In the 1890s, NAWSA’s influence reached across the country, contributing to suffrage victories in the western states. By the early twentieth century, new leaders, including Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw, emerged and suffragists devised innovative tactics in the struggle for the right to vote, including suffrage parades and open-air meetings. By transcribing these materials, you will discover NAWSA's multifaceted history, including the activities of precursor organizations involved in the abolition and women's rights movements, state and federal campaigns for women's suffrage, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and international women's suffrage organizing.

These records are part of the “Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote” topical campaign, which brings together stories from women on the front lines of the largest reform movement in American history. Transcribing these pages will allow you to explore the long struggle for equality through the diaries, letters, and speeches of the women who fought for the right to vote and changed history over 100 years ago.