Death of Mabel Vernon

Mabel Vernon died on September 13, 1975, at the age of 92. Her death marked the end of a life devoted almost entirely to political organizing and activism, spanning more than six decades of American and international reform movements.

Vernon's career began in the militant wing of the woman suffrage movement as a close collaborator of Alice Paul within the National Woman's Party. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, she pivoted to peace and internationalist causes, founding and directing organizations such as the Women's Peace Union and later the People's Mandate Committee, which sought to mobilize public opinion against war and in favor of international disarmament during the interwar period.

In her later years she also supported the Zionist movement and international causes tied to the founding of the state of Israel, reflecting the breadth of her humanitarian and political commitments beyond the suffrage fight for which she is best remembered.

Vernon's death was noted in suffrage histories and Delaware historical archives as the passing of one of the last major figures of the militant suffrage generation. Her papers and legacy continue to be studied by historians of the women's rights movement, and she is memorialized in institutions such as the National Woman's Party archives and the Sewall-Belmont House (now the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument).