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Picketing outside The White House in 1917.
OK, ladies, I may be way late to this party, but I have just been reading up on some historical figures who are my new heroes! I’m talking about the women who picketed, lobbied, organized, and served jail time in 1917 so American women could secure the right to vote.
This is an incredible and moving story that I’d never heard before. The leading suffragists and their fight for their due rights were documented in the HBO movie “Iron Jawed Angels” in 2004. I don’t have cable, so I missed that one, too.
Although my facts may be a little off, here’s the general story:It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to vote. In the years leading up to that legislation, many thousands of brave and passionate women worked tirelessly and literally put their lives on the line to make it a reality. Two young suffragist activists, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, led the charge for a constitutional amendment for women to have the right to vote.
In January 1917, Paul, Burns, and many other women staged the first political protest to picket The White House where President Woodrow Wilson had been less than sympathetic to their cause. In July 1917, picketers, dubbed “Iron Jawed Angels” by the local press, were arrested on charges of "obstructing traffic" and incarcerated at a workhouse for women in Virginia.
The pickets continued and on November 15, 1917, many other women, including Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were arrested and jailed. What became known as “The Night of Terror” began when about forty prison guards wielding clubs, and with their warden's blessing, went on a rampage against the 33 women to "teach them a lesson."
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. In solidarity with Burns, many of the other women assumed the same position in their cells.
Later Alice Paul went on a hunger strike and was eventually force-fed milk and raw eggs through a tube. She was tortured like this for weeks until word of her treatment was leaked to the press by the husband of one of the women. Public opinion began to turn against Wilson and in favor of the woman suffragists.
Continuing demonstrations and press coverage kept pressure on the Wilson administration. In January, 1918, Wilson announced that women's suffrage was urgently needed as a "war measure,” and strongly urged Congress to pass the legislation. In 1920, after coming down to one vote in the state of Tennessee (the last vote came from a legislator who had received a letter from his mother urging him to approve the measure), the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution secured the vote for women.
I know it’s easy to get disillusioned (and I sometimes think that’s where “the man” wants us to be so that we’ll be apathetic and do nothing). Like me, you may be fed up with all political options right now, but let's not lose hope. Let’s remember what those “Iron Jawed Angels” did to progress our democracy and the blood they shed. Let’s tell their story to young women who may take this right for granted. Show the movie on game night or instead of "girls night out."
What ever you do, please vote. It does make a difference.
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