As a result of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote, the National League of Women Voters (NLWV) was established to educate women on how to vote and to provide information on public issues. On May 26, 1921, a meeting was called in the home of Mrs. Gifford Pinchot to form a District of Columbia branch of the National League of Women Voters. League charter members included Mrs. Frank Hiram Snell, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Mrs. Grace Chamberlain, Judge Mary O’Toole, Miss Harleen James, and Mrs. Elizabeth Brownlow. Famous members of the League have included First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Mrs. A.J. McKelway, wife of Benjamin McElway, who became editor of the Washington Evening Star in 1947. In 1926, the League adopted the name, “The Voteless District of Columbia League of Women Voters,” to emphasize the District’s disenfranchisement. Since its inception, the League’s primary focus has been to educate and lobby for greater self-government for the citizens of the District.

The D.C. League has worked on a variety of issues important to the District as well as national and international issues supported by the NWLV. During the 1930s and 1940s, the League conducted studies regarding public assistance relief and child welfare in the District, supported home front mobilization efforts during World War II, D.C. government reorganization, juvenile court changes, child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, and improvement of D.C. schools.

Starting in the 1940s, the League began working for better race relations and supporting civil rights in the Nation’s capital. The League supported desegregating District schools, and anti-discrimination laws in federal government employment and housing. In the 1950s and 1960s the League focused much of its attention on D.C. suffrage and home rule. By the 1980s, the League had positions on a number of public policy issues such as support of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs), a rapid rail system, urban planning, Equal Rights Amendment ratification, and gun control laws with qualified support for the University of the District of Columbia and statehood for the District. The League prints a Voters Guide each election, sponsors a speakers bureau, conducts political debates, and advocates for a number of public policy issues for all D.C. citizens.