[WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE]. Votes for Women suffragette sash. Circa 1913. Original tri-colored sash woven in purple, white, and green with text in dark blue. 26 ½ x 4”. Front half only with old folds, fading to colors, fraying of thread at edges. Similar sashes can be seen worn by marchers at the Woman Suffrage Parade held on 3 March 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as the 28th President of the United States. Wilson had opposed granting women the vote on a national level throughout the 1912 presidential campaign, believing it to be an issue better left to the states. The colors purple, gold, and white were originally adopted by the UK’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), and were then adopted by the suffragette movement’s militant counterparts, the Congressional Union, for the Woman Suffrage Parade. Led by Alice Paul, the Congressional Union spent the next five years putting pressure on President Wilson to grant women the right to vote, with Paul herself making numerous unannounced visits to the White House throughout Wilson’s presidency. Thanks in part to seeing the electoral effects of women voting in those states which had enfranchised them, Wilson came to change his stance on women’s suffrage and would spend the last years of his presidency arguing in favor of granting them the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment was approved by the Senate in June 1919 and was officially ratified in August 1920.