Beauty and the beasts: Significance of press coverage of the 1913 national suffrage parade

When five thousand suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on 3 March 1913, a drunken mob broke up their parade. This article discusses the cultural significance of widespread indignation discovered in parade coverage by ten daily newspapers. Newspapers became the forum for a broader debate on women's place in society stirred by the mayhem. Newspaper coverage of the suffrage parade was significant because it conferred legitimacy upon women's right of assembly. The acknowledgement by the mainstream press that women enjoyed some rights of citizenship moved it closer to the logical conclusion that women also had a right to vote.