Founded in 1922, the Woman's National Democratic Club (WNDC) was the first meeting place for Democratic women in Washington, DC. When WNDC opened its doors in rented quarters near the White House in 1924, members recruited influential Washingtonians to speak at club luncheons. The twice-weekly events have endured for nine decades and provide a lively forum for discussion with speakers such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, E. L. Doctorow, Madeleine Albright, Jim Lehrer, Vernon Jordan, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Loretta and Linda Sanchez and oher prominent national and local figures.

The historic clubhouse, located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of nineteenth-century and Beaux Arts mansions, is also a museum with beautifully appointed rooms for meetings, receptions, weddings, and other private events. Designed by Washington architect Harvey Page, and built in 1892-94 for a descendent of the noted Adams family of Massachusetts, the house is a unique transition between Victorian and Arts and Crafts architecture. WNDC bought the former residence in 1927. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

The WNDC Educational Foundation (EF) opens club facilities, programs, and activities to the public. The EF oversees the club's museum collections and archives, sponsors an oral history and publication program and conducts community outreach projects. The foundation maintains an historic preservation fund to help conserve the landmark clubhouse.

Our Proud Heritage
From the right to vote, the power to lead

Two years after the 19th Amendment granted voting rights to women, WNDC was founded as a socially acceptable meeting place for women to engage in political dialogue. Emily Newell Blair, the most prominent Democratic woman in the country in the 1920s, was the club’s principal founder. As the Democratic National Committee’s vice chair for women’s affairs, Blair oversaw the organization of more than a thousand clubs for Democratic women throughout the country. She also established political schools, hoping to revitalize the party through a well informed women's electorate.

Florence Jaffray "Daisy" Harriman, a Washington and New York socialite, recruited prominent political and social figures for WNDC membership and financial support. Harriman had entered national politics in 1912, eight years before women had national voting rights, to campaign for her friend Woodrow Wilson in his first presidential bid. Harriman also launched a series of bipartisan Sunday night suppers that raised the Democratic Party profile and quickly became a Washington institution.

Through the decades WNDC has been in the forefront on national issues. In the 1930s and 40s, Eleanor Roosevelt advanced her social reform measures from the club podium. At WNDC's Diamond Jubilee in 1998, then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton received the club's first Eleanor Award, presented in honor of Eleanor Roosevelt. Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter received the Eleanor Award in 2003, in recognition of their outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes.

Over the years, many distinguished women have received WNDC's Democratic Woman of the Year Award: Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary Madeleine Albright and the District of Columbia's congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton among them. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s WNDC embraced women's issues, at times to the dismay of its more conservative members. Men were granted full voting membership in 1988. Today, like many volunteer organizations, the club is adapting to twenty-first century social change.

Additional Sources:
Fenzi, Jewell, and Dr. Allida Black. Democratic Women: An Oral History of the Woman's National Democratic Club. Washington, DC: WNDC-Educational Foundation, 2000.

Freeman, Jo. A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.

Gustafson, Melanie, Kristie Miller and Elizabeth I. Perry, eds. We Have Come to Stay: American Women and Political Parties, 1880-1960. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.

Laas, Virginia Jeans. Bridging Two Eras: The Autobiography of Emily Newell Blair, 1877-1951. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.