Witherspoon, Frances M.

Frances Witherspoon twice ran for political office on the Socialist ticket. In 1918 she was an unsuccessful candidate for the U. S. House of Representatives from New York's 15th district. Witherspoon ran the next year for the New York State Assembly. She lost. These candidacies followed several years of activist work in New York and eastern Pennsylvania, where she was one of the first organizers of the Women's Suffrage Party. In 1913, she moved to New York City and joined the Socialist Party. She was a member and secretary of the Woman's Peace Party (WPP), and co-founder of the Anti-Enlistment League. The New York branch of the WPP split off from the national organization. Witherspoon was outspoken as a pacifist, and one of several editors of NYC-WPP's magazine, Four Lights. After the United States declared war, in 1917 she co-founded the New York Bureau of Legal Advice to help conscientious objectors. She served as its Executive Director. Witherspoon and her partner Tracy Mygatt were two of the three women who founded the War Resisters League. She and Mygatt served as honorary chairs. Witherspoon also continued her suffrage activism, serving as a representative of the Socialist-Suffrage campaign committee of greater New York. Witherspoon graduated in 1908 from Bryn Mawr College. She authored plays, articles, poems, and stories, some individually, and others with Mygatt.