Women's Political Union

Purple and white text with a purple border and an illustration in the center of a suffragette with purple hair blowing a trumpet on green castle ramparts holding white flag with 11 purple stars

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, moved to England during the latter half of the 19th century. While in England, Blatch worked with women’s suffrage groups and became inspired by their use of militant tactics. The British Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst, was known for extensive property damage, arson, letter bombing campaigns, and attempted assassinations. When Blatch returned to New York, she founded the Women’s Political Union (WPU) in 1907 and recruited 20,000 working-class women into the suffrage movement. 

The British WSPU’s militancy was a model for Blatch’s WPU, with the U.S. union adopting the same purple, white, and green colors as their English counterpart. The armed “Bugler Girl” was designed by Caroline Watts for the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies. The WPU adopted the “Bugler Girl” image as their symbol for a strong, militant woman with “trumpet blasts calling for change.” The eleven stars on her flag represent the eleven suffrage states at the time of the button’s production in the early 20th century. In addition to fighting for women’s voting rights, the WPU also lobbied for equal pay for female teachers in New York. In 1915, the WPU merged with the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage to form the National Women’s Party. Women in the United States were granted voting rights with the 19th Amendment in 1920.