When president Carrie Chapman Catt addressed the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s 50th convention in St. Louis, Mrs. Catt proposed the creation of a “league of women voters to finish the [suffrage] fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation.” The League of Women Voters was formed within the NAWSA, composed of the organizations in the states where suffrage had already been attained.

            The next year, on February 14, 1920–six months before the 19th amendment to the Constitution was officially ratified–the League was formally organized in Chicago as the national League of Women Voters. Catt described the purpose of the new organization:

“The League of Women Voters is not to dissolve any present organization but to unite all existing organizations of women who believe in its principles. It is not to lure women from partisanship but to combine them in an effort for legislation which will protect coming movements, which we cannot even foretell, from suffering the untoward conditions which have hindered for so long the coming of equal suffrage. Are the women of the United States big enough to see their opportunity?”

            With women about to get the right to vote nationwide, the League became the vehicle to help women learn how to use the vote and how to study issues so they could vote from a position of knowledge.

            Maud Wood Park became the first national president of the League and thus the first League leader to rise to Mrs. Catt’s challenge. She had steered the women’s suffrage amendment through Congress in the last two years before ratification and liked nothing better than legislative work. From the very beginning, however, it was apparent that the legislative goals of the League were not exclusively focused on women’s issues and that citizen education aimed at all of the electorate was in order.

            Since its inception, the League has helped millions of women and men become informed participants in government. In fact, the first League convention voted to adopt 69 separate items as statements of principle and recommendations for legislation. Among them were protection for women and children, rights of working women, food supply and demand, social hygiene, the legal status of women, and American citizenship. The League’s first major national legislative success was the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1921, providing federal aid for maternal and child care programs. In the 1930’s, League members worked successfully for enactment of the Social Security and Food and Drug Acts. Due at least in part to League efforts, legislation passed in 1938 and 1940 to remove hundreds of federal jobs from the spoils system and to place them under Civil Service.

            During the postwar period, the League helped lead the effort to establish the United Nations and to ensure US participation. The League was one of the first organizations in the country officially recognized by the United Nations as a non-governmental organization; it still maintains official observer status today.

            Since 1972 the League has supported the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced in Congress in 1923. Nearly 100 years later, the League still fights for its adoption.

            The League in New Hampshire was formed on November 21, 1919, in Manchester when members of the New Hampshire Equal Suffrage Association voted to change its name to the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire. A new constitution was adopted and Miss Martha Kimball of Portsmouth became its first president. This was just two months after New Hampshire ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. Local units hosted “citizenship schools” on weekends, to help women understand civic structure, the responsibilities of citizenship, and the voting process