Posts Tagged ‘Woodrow Wilson’

Nov 15, 1917 should be remembered as an infamous day in American history.  Women had the nerve, once upon a long ago 90 years ago, to picket in front of Woodrow Wilson’s White House demanding the right to vote.  At first, he was condescending.  Then World War I began and he became angry and vengeful.  They were arrested and treated  as badly as the prisoners at GITMO, for the crime of “blocking a public walkway”….the one on Pennsylvania Avenue, of course.

Read about these women.  Do something to commemorate their suffering for a right too many women don’t even use.   Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Dora Lewis……don’t forget their names and what they gave for generations of women!  They were beaten, kicked, choked, force-fed.  They were accused of being insane and threatened with permanent incarceration.  They endured.  They won.  Don’t give up using the right they won for you out of laziness, ignorance, being too busy, or any other excuse.  They suffered for you.  Honor their suffering by ALWAYS voting.

The following small teasing bits of their history will take you on a journey not taught in your usual history book.

+++In 1912, Lucy Burns and Alice Paul began a battle for passage of a constitutional amendment to guarantee women the right to vote in the United States. In 1913, they created the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage, three years later  it became the National Women’s Party. Lucy helped organize political campaigns, was the editor of the Suffragist, and spent time in jail for her work in Washington D.C. She used chalk to write messages supporting voting rights for women and during World War I she demonstrated against President Wilson in front of the White House. Lucy was arrested six times and spent more time in jail than any other American suffragist. Lucy Burns was a powerful speaker. In Jailed for Freedom, author Doris Stevens wrote, “Her talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with her audience.”+++(http://www.pocanticohills.org/womenenc/burns.htm) 

+++The arrested suffragists were sent to Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia. (Alice) Paul and her compatriots followed the English suffragette model and demanded to be treated as political prisoners and staged hunger strikes. Their demands were met with brutality as suffragists, including frail, older women, were beaten, pushed and thrown into cold,  unsanitary, and rat-infested cells.  Arrests continued and conditions at the prison deteriorated.  For staging hunger strikes, Paul and several other suffragists were forcibly fed in a tortuous method.  Prison officials removed Paul to a sanitarium in hopes of getting her declared insane.  When news of the prison conditions and hunger strikes became known, the press, some politicians, and the public began demanding the women’s release; sympathy for the prisoners brought many to support the cause of women’s suffrage.  Upon her release from prison, Paul hoped to ride this surge of goodwill into victory.  +++

http://www.alicepaul.org/alicep2.htm

+++Dora Lewis received some of the most brutal treatment at the hands of wardens at the District jail and the Occoquan Workhouse. During the infamous “Night of Terror” of November 15, 1917, at Occoquan, Lewis was hurled bodily into her cell. She was knocked unconscious and feared dead when she collided headfirst against her iron bed frame. Lewis and Lucy Burns were initial leaders of the hunger strike in Occoquan; both grew so weak that they were held down by attendants and force-fed through a tube.+++

http://americancivilwar.com/women/Womens_Suffrage/Dora_Lewis.html