On July 20 and 21, 1923, the National Woman’s Party (NWP) convened at Seneca Falls, New York, to celebrate the recent ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, securing women nationally the right to vote, and to begin a campaign for a new amendment that would guarantee legal equality for women. Initially this new amendment was named the Lucretia Mott Amendment, in honor of one of the principal organizers of the first women’s rights meeting at Seneca Falls in 1848, but later it would be known as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The draft amendment presented that July at the NWP convention (and to the U.S. Congress later that year) read, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The ERA sparked many debates over the course of the twentieth century, and one hundred years later it is still under deliberation. While much of the history of the ERA is often focused on the 1970s, the discourse during the first few decades after the amendment’s introduction showcases the differing viewpoints held by labor feminists, African American women, and various women’s organizations at that time.
