Alpha Suffrage Club

CTL-E-5857 · Organization · civic · 1913–1920s

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07110 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5857.

The Alpha Suffrage Club was a Chicago organization founded on January 30, 1913, by journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells, with white colleagues Belle Squire and Virginia Brooks. Illinois Institute of Technology's institutional history describes it as the first organization established to promote the right for Black women to vote in Illinois, formed because Black women had been largely excluded from existing local and national suffrage organizations. The club met every Wednesday evening at the Negro Fellowship League, at 3005 South State Street in Bronzeville, and set out to educate Black and working-class women on civic matters and the importance of voting as a path to electing African American candidates to public office. Wells stated its object in terms of using the vote for the advantage of Black Chicagoans, and the club sent her to Washington for the March 1913 suffrage parade, where she refused segregation and joined the Illinois contingent. The League of Women Voters of Chicago records that members built an effective political network, distributed their own newsletter, and grew to nearly two hundred members by 1916. A commemorative marker at 31st and State streets was unveiled on October 1, 2021.

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 8; first Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Alpha Suffrage Club entity in the live graph at 3,523 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5857 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan sample, readiness rank 2142 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #198). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — a Chicago Black women's civic organization founded by Ida B. Wells (CTL-E-0081, homed), core Black Chicago institutional history. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): by 1916 the club's membership was nearly 200, as reported by the League of Women Voters of Chicago and the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites (accessed 2026-10-16); no other statistic is asserted. MEDIA: photo HELD (period photographs of the club and its members are held in archival collections; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5857-alpha-suffrage-club.svg); video HELD (no CTL Short or other video for this organization verified with a cataloged URL in this pass); audio HELD (no audio asset exists or was cleared for this organization in this pass). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Organization records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule in this pass; maps attach to places and inst) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No CTL Short or other video for this subject was verified with a cataloged URL in this pass.) | audio = HELD (No audio asset cleared for this subject in this pass.)

Relationships

• Ida B. Wells — founded by
  The Alpha Suffrage Club was founded on January 30, 1913, in Chicago by Ida B. Wells with Belle Squire and Virginia Brooks.

Sources

• Illinois Institute of Technology, "More Than a Marker: Celebrating the Work of Alpha Suffrage Club" (October 1, 2021) — supports the January 30, 1913 founding by Wells, the first-in-Illinois characterization, the Wednesday meetings at 3005 S. State Street, and the October 1, 2021 marker unveiling — https://www.iit.edu/news/more-marker-celebrating-work-alpha-suffrage-club (primary source · build store)
• League of Women Voters of Chicago, "The Alpha Suffrage Club and Ida B. Wells" (accessed 2026-10-16) — supports the club's civic-education purpose, the newsletter and political network, the nearly 200 members by 1916, and Wells's role in the March 1913 Washington parade — https://www.lwvchicago.org/news/ida-b-wells-suffrage-club (primary source · build store)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ida B. Wells" (accessed 2026-10-16) — supports the 1913 founding of the club as a Black women's suffrage group backing candidates who would serve the Black community — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ida-B-Wells (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5857 · Combined Graph record U-07110 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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