Mapping the Path to Equality: Sites of Women’s Suffrage History

While many today take the right to vote for granted, that simply wasn’t the case for most of American history. Women, Indigenous people, Blacks, Asians, Jews, Quakers, Catholics, and non-landowning white Protestant males were not always guaranteed this right. In early American history, some states did allow women to vote, but this right was taken away several years later. The fight to grant women the right to vote culminated on August 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment was adopted. Explore our Women’s Suffrage History Map, which details many of the people and places in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo that played important roles in advancing this right:

Inez Milholland

Inez Milholland & 9 East 9th Street

Inez was suffragist, lawyer, and activist who lived at 9 East 9th Street. She was a member of countless groups seeking peace and equality, including the NAACP, the Women’s Trade Union League, the Equality League of Self Supporting Women in New York, and the National Child Labor Committee. She attended her first suffrage parade on May 7, 1911 and would attend and lead many more. On March 13, 1913, she led the dramatic Woman Suffrage Procession on horseback in advance of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

Clara Lemlich

Clara Lemlich, 278 East 3rd Street

Clara Lemwas a Russian Jewish immigrant garment worker. At the age of just 23 she helped lead the Uprising of 20,000, the massive garment industry strike in 1909 for workers’ rights, two years prior to the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. After being blacklisted for her labor organizing, she founded the Wage Earner’s Suffrage League, a suffrage organization for working-class women. Clara lived in a tenement at 278 East 3rd Street with her parents and six siblings.

Esther Lape & Elizabeth Read

L-R: Esther Lape, Elizabeth Read, 20 East 11th Street

Life partners Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read were influential women’s suffrage activists who lived at 20 East 11th Street (which Lape owned) for over twenty years. Esther was a writer, educator, and journalist, and Elizabeth was a lawyer. They were founders of the League of Women Voters and were close friends and advisors to Elanor Roosevelt, who also rented an apartment here from 1933-1942.

These three are just a handful of the important sites related to Women’s Suffrage History in our neighborhoods. Explore them all on our map here.

Explore all our maps and virtual tours here.