New Jersey Suffrage Buttons

There were two prominent suffrage organizations that operated in New Jersey, the Women’s Political Union of New Jersey (WPUNJ) and the much larger New Jersey Woman’s Suffrage Association (NJWSA). The WPUNJ was originally organized as the Equality League for Self-Supporting Women of New Jersey by Mina C. Van Winkle as an affiliate of Harriot Stanton Blatch’s group from New York with a similar name. It continued as an independent group until it finally merged with the NJWA in 1916.

While on its own, the WPUNJ, like its parent WPU, adopted the official colors of purple, green, and white from the English. The NJWSA, organized in 1867, used as its official color the yellow or gold of NAWSA. The buttons that mention October 19 allude to the referendum on suffrage held on registration day in New Jersey in 1915, not the general voting day of November 2, in what was perhaps a concerted effort to keep voter participation down. Whatever the case, turnout was low, and the franchise amendment went down to defeat.