It began with women kneeling together in prayer in the doorways, sidewalks and steps of saloons, chiding customers and barkeepers to turn away from alcohol. That was in the winter of 1873; by the next summer, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed, its stated aim to create a “sober and pure” world free of the evils of alcohol.
But Frances Willard, who was elected the WCTU’s second president in 1879, had bigger plans. Within a year, the WCTU was the largest women’s organization in the world with a broader focus on temperance, women’s rights and expanding women’s political power.
She supported granting women the right to vote. She helped to institute the eight-hour work day and lobbied for legislation to raise the age of consent in several states. She built an international network of local chapters and women leaders, and trained women in grassroots lobbying and public speaking.
In all, she traveled an average of 30,000 miles and gave 400 lectures a year during her 10 years as WCTU president. That’s a lot of leading and organizing, and her work led to two amendments to the United States Constitution, one prohibiting alcohol and the other granting women the right to vote.
It didn’t happen without controversy, however.
Frances Willard was born in 1839, eventually settling with her family in Evanston, Ill. After graduating from college, she taught school for a few years, then returned to Evanston to accept a position as the first women’s dean at Northwestern University. She stayed a year, but left after falling out with the president of the university to whom she had once been engaged. (She broke it off.)
After leaving Northwestern, Frances threw herself into the temperance movement.
The movement was born in 1874 from the belief that alcohol represented danger to women in terms of violence from drunk men. Women risked losing custody of their children if they left, and with zero property rights could be put out of their homes with no recourse. The WCTU hoped to change that by promoting religious morals and removing alcohol as the source of society’s problems.
Frances was elected WCTU president in 1879, and her tenure would diverge sharply from the organization’s initial single focus on abstinence.
At the time, the WCTU was the nation’s largest women’s organization — and growing fast. The WCTU was one of the few places where women had the opportunity to develop political organizing skills. Leaders trained local chapter members in public speaking, lobbying state legislators, publishing and education. They actively recruited African American women to form segregated local and state chapters, and extended leadership training to everyone.
Frances held a feminist interpretation of the Bible, believing that natural and divine laws call for equal partnership between men and women in the household, church, education and government. To achieve this, she believed women needed to have greater political influence — and that meant the right to vote.
While suffrage wasn’t the WCTU’s original goal, it helped to expand support for the cause among moderate and conservative women.
Frances set her sights on southern states to recruit support for prohibition and women’s suffrage. During one of her most controversial trips, she met with Varina Davis, the former first lady of the Confederacy, who at the time was secretary of the Memphis WCTU chapter.
The southern campaign caused serious problems among Black leaders within the WCTU, many of whom were rightly offended by the WCTU promoting racist stereotypes by linking alcohol to crime in the Black community. Ida B. Wells, a journalist and anti-lynching advocate, also accused Frances of excusing lynching by blaming it on the results of alcohol.
Frances denied Wells’s criticism, reiterating the WCTU’s goal to empower and protect all women, but the damage was done. Black WCTU leaders who supported Wells felt marginalized, and in 1896 Frances Harper, one of the WCTU’s top Black leaders, left the organization to form, with Wells, the National Association of Colored Women.
Frances continued to expand the WCTU, forming the World WCTU in 1888 and working closely with the British Women’s Temperance Association. She died in 1898 of the flu, just before a trip to London. She was still WCTU president at the time.
By 1920, WCTU membership had grown to more than 220,000 women nationwide. Their efforts led to passage of the 18th amendment prohibiting alcohol in the United States, and helped to bring about ratification of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920.