Thousands Celebrate Woman’s Right to Vote, Re-creating March Down Pennsylvania Ave. (photos)

On March 3, women and men from around the U.S. came to Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Parade of March 3, 1913, “to honor the Suffragist & the 22 Delta founders who marched in the original 1913 march.” The event on March 3 was largely organized by the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority which was also celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding by 22 collegiate women at Howard University. Today, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority is the largest African-American Greek-lettered sorority in the world. The event was attended by an estimated 20,000 sorority members from as far away as Japan, Germany and Guam. Members of the National Organization for Women, the League of Women Voters, the National Women’s History Museum and several other women’s organizations joined the Deltas, many dressed as suffragists.

The 1913 march down Pennsylvania Avenue was organized by the suffragist Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration. The marchers were jeered and harassed largely by men who were in town to attend the inauguration. Less than two months after the sorority’s founding, the founders of Delta Sigma Theta began their political activism by participating in that historic march. The local police largely stood by as more than 200 women were injured and treated at local hospitals. Nevertheless, most of the marchers finished the parade. The march and the attention it attracted were important in advancing women’s suffrage in the United States. In 1920, the 19th Amendment secured the right to vote for women.

View our photos of the 2013 rally at the Capitol and march down Pennsylvania Avenue by clicking on the photo icons below.