American organization, founded in 1869 and based in New York City, that was created by Susan B. Anthony (Anthony, Susan B.) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Stanton, Elizabeth Cady) when the women's rights movement split into two groups over the issue of suffrage for African American men. Considered the more radical of the two, the NWSA gave priority to securing women the right to vote, and the group often stirred public debate through its reform proposals on a number of social issues, including marriage and divorce. Having invited all woman suffrage societies in the United States to become auxiliaries of the NWSA, the group had increased its ranks considerably by the time it reunited with its sister organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, in 1890.