History of the LWV United States

The League was born out of the Women’s Suffrage movement.

• In 1919, President Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman Suffrage Assn. (NAWSA) proposed creation of a “league of women voters to finish the fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation.”
• On Feb. 14, 1920, six months before the 19th amendment was ratified, the League of Women Voters was formally organized in Chicago.

Catt described the purpose of the new organization:

"The League of Women Voters is not to dissolve any present organization but to unite all existing organizations of women who believe in its principles. It is not to lure women from partisanship but to combine them in an effort for legislation which will protect coming movements, which we cannot even foretell, from suffering the untoward conditions which have hindered for so long the coming of equal suffrage. Are the women of the United States big enough to see their opportunity?"

The new LWV organization

• Maud Wood Park became the first national president.
• From the beginning it was apparent that the legislative goals were not exclusively focused on women’s issues, so
• Citizen education of all the electorate was in order.

The work of the early League

• The first convention voted 69 separate items as statements of principle and recommendations for legislation, including protection for women and children, right of working women, food supply and demand, social hygiene, the legal status of women, and American citizenship.
• Legislative successes included federal aid for maternal and child care programs, the Social Security Act, and Food and Drug Acts.
• The League helped lead the effort to establish the United Nations and to ensure US participation.

History of the LWV Texas

The League in Texas was organized on October 19, 1919, at the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio.  

• Jessie Daniel Ames of Georgetown served as the first president.
• They conducted citizenship schools, questioned political candidates and published the responses, and held “get-out-the-vote” campaigns
• In the 1920’s, they lobbied for legislation to establish a minimum wage for women, prohibit child labor, reform the state prison system, and allow jury service for women.
• The LWV Texas did not endorse candidates or political parties; it studied political issues and wrote position papers.

The early work of the League in Texas

• They worked for a constitutional amendment, passed in 1954, enabling women to serve on juries.
• They supported the establishment of a family court system in Texas, a permanent voter registration system, and urged elimination of legal discrimination of married women.
• State League membership was racially integrated in the mid-1950’s, and reached a peak of 5000 members.

LWV-CC History

LWVTX History

LWVUS History