Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument: The Fight for the Vote

Tucked away on Capitol Hill, near the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol, Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument tells the story of the fight for the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote, and of the continuing fight for equality. Named for suffragists Alva Belmont and Alice Paul, it holds an unparalleled collection of women's suffrage artifacts. Take a guided tour or explore the house on your own.

Noon light through the stained-glass fan window. A National Park Foundation grant paid for its restoration in fall 2016. Photo: NPS/Marcey Frutchey.

The entry hall

The house is full of exhibits and artifacts, but the entry hall looks much as it did when Alice Paul lived and worked here. The recently restored stained-glass fan window lights the busts and portraits of the many who fought for equality.

New tactics for an old cause

Inspired by the British suffragettes, Alice Paul and her supporters reinvigorated the American suffrage movement and gave it new urgency.

• In 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, thousands of women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House to "demand an amendment enfranchising the women" of the United States. Photographs, textiles and artifacts show the marchers' courage as the parade turned into a riot.
• The "Deadly Political Index" shows the strategies the National Woman's Party used to press for change — all-women automobile tours, and being the first to picket the White House. Artwork, photographs, banners and cartoons show their determination and creativity.
• A skeleton key smuggled out of the district jail, and a jail door–shaped pin — which the party awarded to women arrested for the cause — testify to those who gave up their freedom to win the vote.

Suffragists, the first group ever to picket the White House, often carried banners addressed directly to President Wilson. Photo: National Woman's Party.

Ratification, and after

The exhibits follow the final push to make the Susan B. Anthony Amendment the 19th Amendment — including how one vote made Tennessee the 36th and final state needed to ratify it in time for women to vote in the 1920 presidential election.

The party kept pressing for equality in the United States and the world. After the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced in 1923, it worked for almost 50 years to get it through Congress, only to see it fall three states short of ratification when the deadline passed in 1982. The exhibits compare the anti-suffrage movement with the Stop ERA campaign that blocked it.

Visiting

• Open Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Accessible, easily reached from the Capitol South and Union Station Metro stops, with no entrance fee.
• Events through the year include programs for Women's History Month in March and Women's Equality Day in August; the Junior Suffragist program runs year-round.

In 1999, a Save America's Treasures grant — a program that helps preserve nationally significant historic properties and collections — funded work to rehabilitate what was then the Sewall-Belmont House, managed by the National Woman's Party.

Sources

Based on "National Park Getaway: Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument," by Mike Litterst, Chief of Communications, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source's photograph of a jail door pin, credited to the National Woman's Party, is not reproduced. Its "National Women's Party" is corrected to "National Woman's Party".