Davison joined Emmeline Pankhurst's WSPU in 1906, beginning her militant suffrage career (exact day unverified).
In 1906, Emily Davison joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters. Although the precise day of her enrolment is not documented in surviving records, this year marks a pivotal turning point in her life, as she moved from a career in teaching and academia toward full immersion in the fight for women's voting rights.
The WSPU, whose motto was 'Deeds not Words,' rejected the gradualist, purely constitutional tactics of earlier suffrage societies in favour of direct action, civil disobedience, and, increasingly, acts that risked arrest and imprisonment. Davison's decision to join reflected a broader radicalisation among many educated women of her generation who felt that decades of peaceful petitioning had produced insufficient results.
Her membership in the WSPU set her on a path that would include multiple arrests, imprisonments, hunger strikes, and force-feedings over subsequent years, culminating in her fatal actions at the 1913 Epsom Derby. This affiliation transformed her from a private individual into one of the movement's most committed and ultimately most famous martyrs, whose sacrifice would be invoked by suffrage campaigners for years afterward.