When St. Louis was chosen as the site for the 1916 Democratic National Convention, the city's suffragists found themselves at the center of a national push to get a plank for women's right to vote included in the Democratic presidential platform.

Members of the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League decided to organize a local demonstration for the cause. Hunger strikes and sitdowns and even jailings had taken place in other parts of the country, but the local group opted for something more dignified.

The group included Mrs. Florence Richardson, Mrs. Roland Usher, Miss Marie Garesche, Miss Bertha Rombauer, Mrs. Aaron Rauh, Mrs. Ernest Stix, Mrs. Luella Sayman, Mrs. Thomas Ratcliffe, Mrs. William Fordyce and the inspirational Edna Fischel Gellhorn.


They decided on a "walkless, talkless parade" -- thousands of women wearing yellow sashes and carrying yellow parasols aligned along the route the conventioneers would travel. The women would not speak but instead stand still as judgment while the delegates passed through their "Golden Lane."

Gellhorn, charismatic in her classless graciousness, sent letters pleading for support to everyone and her sister: "The parasol may be obtained at Scruggs-Vandervoort and Barney, price 50 cents ... We are counting on your cooperation. Without the cooperation of every woman who believes in suffrage, our demonstration will lack the size and beauty that not only suffrage sentiment but civic pride expect."

On that sunny morning of June 14, more than 7,000 women, dressed in yellow sashes and carrying yellow parasols, lined Locust Street from 12th Street to 19th Street. A tableau portrayed Lady Liberty surrounded by women representing each of the states. Those who represented states that had given the vote to women dressed in white. Those who portrayed states that had failed to extend enfranchisement, Missouri among them, dressed in black and displayed manacled hands.

The Post-Dispatch editorial that same evening captured the collective force of the silent rows of faces, identifying the group in the singular, as a vast sisterhood: "She mutely asks Democracy to throw her a plank in the political sea ... She asks why shouldn't a female have equal rights. Devotees of liberty and equality, look her in the face and tell her why."

At the convention, the plank for women's suffrage passed by a margin of eight to one. The women kept vigil in the gallery, banned from the floor. The July newsletter of the Missouri Suffrage League described the wordless celebration as the votes came in: "Suddenly, one yellow parasol began to wave, then more and more ... as if a field of golden poppies had suddenly sprung up."

After that acknowledgment, it was only a matter of time and agitation until on June 4, 1919, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex."

Movement gains momentum

What appeared to be the end of the battle for women's rights really was only the beginning.

In March 1919, the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League was host to the golden jubilee convention of the National American Suffrage Association. At that meeting, the members decided to dissolve the suffrage league and reorganize it as a group dedicated to educating the electorate and ensuring the honesty and merit of public officials. They called their new group the League of Women Voters.

This group and others from the International Ladies Garment Workers to the National Organization for Women would raise the standard for economic equality, for equal educational opportunities, for equal access to certain professions previously closed to women, for no-fault divorce laws and for the cause of women internationally.

"Arise, women voters!" Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National Suffrage Association, said at the convention here. "In this your first union together, let the nation hear you pledge all that you have and all that you are to a new crusade."

They did just that.