As president of NAWSA, Shaw led major national suffrage rallies and Independence Day demonstrations advocating for women's voting rights.
As president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1904 to 1915, Anna Howard Shaw organized and led numerous rallies, marches, and public demonstrations advocating for women's suffrage, including prominent Independence Day events that drew symbolic connections between American ideals of liberty and women's exclusion from full citizenship.
Shaw's leadership during this period was crucial in maintaining momentum for the suffrage movement during a challenging decade, as internal divisions threatened to fracture the organization. Her powerful oratory—she was renowned as one of the most gifted public speakers in America—helped rally supporters at gatherings across the country, using Independence Day themes to highlight the hypocrisy of a nation founded on liberty yet denying half its population the vote.
Her tenure as NAWSA president bridged the movement from its nineteenth-century origins toward the final push for the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920. Though she stepped down from the NAWSA presidency in 1915, her decade of leadership, extensive speaking tours, and organizational strategy laid essential groundwork for the movement's ultimate success. She was succeeded by Carrie Chapman Catt, who led NAWSA through the final ratification campaign.