During the 1880s and 1890s, the women-led temperance movement to ban alcohol gradually and sporadically endorsed women’s suffrage as a means for achieving its goals. The interplay between the women’s suffrage and temperance movements, however, varied by region. In the South, women’s suffrage efforts conflicted with many white men's perception of a disparity between an unwillingness of southern white women to vote and a likely high turnout by Black women, resulting in an overall Black majority. In North Carolina, as in the south generally, white men gravitated away from the Republican Party, which they characterized as the “Negro Party.” As a result, a white supremacy ideology evolved that prevented a successful coalition of suffragists and temperance advocates. Instead, a "Southern Strategy" emerged by which white women suffragists argued that enfranchising women would enlarge the white vote because they significantly outnumbered Black women.
Major activities and events are listed chronologically. Each item is designated as either primarily national or North Carolina (US or NC).