Talk:National Woman Suffrage Association

Fresh start
The old versions of this article were so confused it needed a fresh start, which I have attempted. Dwalls 03:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Photo Date?
Are we sure about the date on that photo? The NWSA merged with the AWSA in 1890 to form the NAWSA. I find it unlikely that this photo both a) actually dates from 1913, and b) represents the historically significant organization known as the NWSA.--Parnberg (talk) 09:03, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * My take on this photo is that it does date from 1913 (see the slogan, "Votes for Women," on the sash of the woman on the left), These 1913 campaigners are holding an historical banner of the wing of the movement (Anthony and Stanton's) they identify with. Dwalls (talk) 12:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Planned overhaul of article
This article is basically sound, but it needs rewriting to accommodate several corrections and additions. I have posted an almost-final draft of a proposed rewrite of this article in my workspace at User:Bilpen/sandbox. I will leave it up for a few days for comments before making the edit. I am proposing these specific changes:

Use "NWSA" as the short reference to the organization instead of "the National". Drop the image of George Train, who did not have a direct link to the NWSA itself.

Drop the image of the 1917 suffrage map, which isn't appropriate for an organization that ended its existence in 1890.

Dropped the statement that the 19th amendment was "penned by Elizabeth Cady Stanton". The cited source doesn't say that, and it isn't accurate.

Dropped references to the Oakley biography of Stanton, which is brief (164 pages) and dated (1972), replacing them with references to better sources.

Replaced the list of "other prominent activists forming the National" with a list of the people who signed the NWSA's "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States", a reasonable and self-limiting approximation of the most prominent NWSA activists, and also a photo gallery with explanatory text about a few of the most prominent activists.

Restructured the article around major events of the organization's 21-year life, folding the contents of the current "Accomplishments" section into the new structure.

Dropped the section called "Structure and ideology":
 * More than half of the Structure sub-section is a sub-sub-section called "New constitution", which merely provides details of the organization's short and unremarkable constitution. I replaced that text with a link in the new "External links" section that points to the complete text of the 1883 constitution at the Library of Congress.  I folded the rest of the Structure sub-section into the discussion of the differences between the NWSA and the AWSA.
 * The Ideology sub-sub-section is misnamed. The NWSA adopted various tactics and strategies to achieve its goal of suffrage, but it's an overstatement to describe any of that as an ideology.  I moved the discussion of the Miner's "New Direction" strategy from the current Ideology section to its own section.  Bilpen (talk) 20:30, 5 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I posted the overhaul. Bilpen (talk) 19:45, 8 October 2020 (UTC)