AMERICAN WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE ASSN. - The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The AMERICAN WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE ASSN. convention in Cleveland, on November 24-25, 1869, signalled a schism in the national WOMEN's suffrage movement that lasted over twenty years. This national organization of state women's suffrage associations formed as a less radical alternative to the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded earlier the same year by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Convention delegates from twenty-one states and supporters filled the large auditorium of CASE HALL. Susan B. Anthony (trying to cooperate with the new group), the Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and former Clevelander CAROLINE SEVERANCE† attended. Henry Ward Beecher was elected president and William Lloyd Garrison vice-president; a constitution was then written. The group initiated new state suffrage associations and coordinated their work. The AWSA (which published the Woman's Journal) advocated state-by-state enfranchisement, while its counterpart, the National Woman Suffrage Association (which published The Revolution) worked for a federal Equal Rights Amendment. The two organizations eventually merged, in 1890, into the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Scharf, Lois. "The Women's Movement in Cleveland from 1850," Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform.

Related Article(s)

• WOMEN AND WOMEN'S ISSUES
• POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
• REFORM, CHARITY AND PHILANTHROPY