AP Photo Clara Darrow, president of the North Dakota Votes for Women League, was the driver in a suffrage parade. Among her passengers was “Mrs. Lutz,” identified in writing on the back of the photo as “national president.” (NDSU Archives.)

By Lori Ann Lahlum

On July 4, 1913, the Larimore Woman Suffrage Club sponsored a parade, said to be the first such event in the northwest, as part of the Independence Day celebration.

According to The Evening Times of Grand Forks, 200 women and girls participated in the event that featured marchers, eight mounted marshals, and floats. On the floats festooned with banners declaring “Taxation Without Representation Is Tyranny” and “Equality at the Ballot Box,” suffragists publicly supported their cause.

One float featured a shackled Lady Liberty. On another, 48 girls represented each state in the union. Ten wore yellow and white dresses in a nod to states with full suffrage rights for women. Others dressed completely in yellow for states in which women had partial suffrage, and the remainder, clad in black, stood for the states denying women any suffrage rights. One float clearly linked anti-suffrage and the liquor industry as Miss Anti-Suffrage was “presented with the compliments and bouquets of the whiskey men, the boodler and the grafter.”

Organizers had intended to keep the parade a secret. But one woman informed her husband of the plans. As a result, anti-suffragists organized and they, too, participated. One anti-suffrage float featured local newspaper editor E. L. Richter in the kitchen holding one baby while “three were squalling on the floor with burning bread in the oven.”

The husbands of some suffragists crafted a banner reading: “Our wives are suffragettes. Are we? No.” By the time the Larimore parade took place, such events had become an important way for suffragists to demonstrate support for the enfranchisement of women. While less common in states like North Dakota, suffrage parades became more common as a political tactic after the widely successful processional in Washington the day prior to Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 inauguration,

In 1913 and 1914, North Dakota suffrage groups, worked to convince men to vote in favor of the suffrage amendment in the 1914 election. Parades became a visible aspect of that effort. In May, women in the Fairmount area held a parade in conjunction with a visit by Harriet Hall, an organizer for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union on a lecture tour in North Dakota.

Beach women, under the leadership of Mary Hudson, held a small parade in late June that New York suffragist “General” Rosalie Jones attended. A second suffrage parade took place in the same town a few days later in conjunction with a planned parade for the arrival of the circus. The circus did not make it to Beach, but suffragists held their parade- autos and a float with children holding “Votes for Women” banners.. These smaller car parades became popular because they were easy to organize.

Some parades were quite large. Suffragists in the Fargo-Moorhead area had a float in the Ringling circus parade in late July. The women received a positive reception until the parade crossed into Moorhead. Men lining the sidewalks in front of saloons heckled the women on the suffrage float.

That fall, Bismarck hosted a parade as part of the North Dakota Industrial Exposition. Yellow flowers and banners decorated cars and floats. Children “waved yellow banners” imploring attendees to “Vote for Mother.” Once again, Lady Liberty was present and girls represented the suffrage states and Alaska Territory on a float, while other girls paid homage to states, like North Dakota, that allowed women to vote on school matters. The exposition parade was part of the Votes for Women League’s Suffrage Rally Day October 22, which marked the final push as men prepared to vote November 3.

Although the suffrage amendment went down to defeat in November, suffragists had effectively adopted and used parades to promote their message of Votes for Women.

A native of North Dakota, Lori Ann Lahlum is professor of history at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is co-editor of “Equality at the Ballot Box: Votes for Women on the Northern Great Plains.”