As early as its convention in March 1919, the National American Woman Suffrage Association began to plan a new organization for after the vote was won. The League of Women Voters was designed to be a non-partisan and non-sectarian body with the aims of securing the enfranchisement of women in every state and supporting women’s struggle abroad; removing remaining legal discrimination against women; and upholding democracy. In New Jersey, NJWSA held a victory convention on April 23 and 24, 1920 at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, where they formally dissolved and reorganized as the New Jersey League of Women Voters. Officers were elected including Lillian Feickert as treasurer. Some local suffrage groups also dissolved to become leagues of women voters. In New Brunswick, Sarah Atkinson joined the “Non-Partisan League of Women Voters” shortly after its founding. Elizabeth Hill became temporary chairman of the New Brunswick organization, later serving as treasurer and president. In South River, thirty-five women enrolled in its own Non-Partisan League and elected Sarah Selover president. Looking forward to women’s participation in the presidential election of 1920, the state League of Women Voters founded “citizen schools” to prepare new voters.

Lillian Feickert, however, left the league after her term as treasurer ended, choosing instead to become involved in Republican party politics, as did Florence Spearing Randolph and Sarah DeMott Stevens. The Republican Party reached out to women in the state as a potential source of votes. Local Republican clubs in Highland Park and Piscatawaytown in Edison held special meetings for female voters. At a meeting organized by the Dunellen Republican Club, the female voters of Dunellen were “instructed in the art of voting.”

Although the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 was a great victory, inequities in voting still remained. While African-American women could vote in New Jersey, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory tactics prevented most black women from voting in the South. Native Americans did not achieve the right of citizenship and the right to vote until 1924, although in some states they had to wait much longer. Asian-Americans were not granted the right to become citizens and vote until 1952. The passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 barred discriminatory practices like literary tests and poll taxes, but racially motivated disenfranchisement continues. In some respects, winning the vote was only the beginning of a century-long struggle for women’s rights. Soon after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party regrouped to lobby for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which remains unratified. Throughout the twentieth century, women continued to advocate for equal rights and opportunities, such as the ability to serve on juries. The Second Wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in legislation barring discrimination in education and employment among other achievements. Today the struggle continues as women attempt to break the glass ceiling in politics, business, and the professions. Parallels to the suffrage movement can be seen in the symbolically-white dresses worn by Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, and other women candidates for public office. In the early twentieth-first century, echoes of women’s demand for enfranchisement can be heard in the calls for greater democracy by the busloads of New Brunswick and Rutgers women and men who attended the 2017-2019 Women’s Marches, and most recently by protestors in Black Lives Matter movement demonstrating in the cities and towns of Middlesex County.