Lucy Gwynne Branham

Lucy Gwynne Branham (April 29, 1892 – July 18, 1966) was an American suffragist associated with the National Woman's Party.

Education She earned degrees in history from Washington College in Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University (Master's degree). She began work on a Ph.D. at Columbia University under Charles A. Beard, but, in the words of historian Julia L. Mickenberg, Branham "turned from academia to activism, becoming a field organizer for the NWP". Historian Katherine A. S. Siegel notes that, "In 1916, Branham put her studies aside to begin work in the National Woman's Party." Siegel writes that Branham "worked tirelessly for suffrage and, when she could, on the readings Beard assigned her," and she began teaching history in Columbia's adult extension program in the fall of 1920, but she left within a year to go to Russia as a representative of the New York Herald - Armand Hammer described her as the "suffragette history professor." Although the dissertation she was working on ("The History of Labor and Politics in New York") was listed as being "in progress" with an expected completion date of 1922, Columbia University "has no record that Branham ever finished her Ph.D." Her Johns Hopkins master's thesis ("An Outline of the Political History of Georgia, During the Revolutionary War") is the only thesis or dissertation listed under her name in WorldCat, so Branham must have been ABD and never finished her doctorate, concentrating on activism rather than academe.

In 1916, she was a National Woman's Party organizer in Utah, and in September of the following year she was arrested for picketing the White House as part of the Silent Sentinels, a NWP campaign for women's suffrage, for which she served two months in the Occoquan Workhouse and the District jail.

In 1918, Branham lobbied in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama for a federal amendment in the Senate that would legalize women's suffrage.

After women's suffrage was obtained in 1920, she led the Inez Milholland Memorial Fund Committee, which created an ongoing endowment fund for the NWP. She also worked with the World Woman's Party in Geneva and lobbied the League of Nations on equal rights issues.