Protest

[StephanieVanbryce]

Women's History Month: The 19th Amendment

Tomorrow, women in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont go to the polls, as they have since just 1920--just 88 years ago--and the story of how they got there is a harrowing tale of fighters like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, as well as a different kind of 50-state strategy, mass arrests, maggot infested force-feedings, rose wars, and so much more.

The final push for elective franchise for women is one of the most riveting tales in American history. As Harriot Stanton Blatch said after the Amendment was ratified:

All honor to women, the first disenfranchised class in history who unaided by any political party, won enfranchisement by its own effort alone, and achieved the victory without the shedding of a drop of human blood.


A different kind of 50 State Strategy

For the first 15 years of the 20th century, female suffragists had been working on a 50-state strategy. The idea of this strategy was to campaign for suffrage using new Western states, many of which granted women the right to vote in state elections, as examples to build a consensus, state by state, to allow women to vote. Once all fifty states allowed women to vote, surely the national government would have to concede the national vote as well. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, as well as their allies and cohorts, thought that plan would take too long, and the only way to effectively accomplish the rest of the goals of the women's movement was to achieve full, national, and immediate suffrage rights for women.

Radicalized in England under the influence of Emmeline Pankhurst, Alice Paul returned to the United States in 1910 to join the fight for women's equality. Six years later, frustrated by American Suffragists 50-state strategy, Paul, with her friend Lucy Burns, formed the National Women's Party. There they began to employ some of the more radical tactics they had learned in England. They staged parades, mass meetings, and hunger watches, among other, sometimes even criminal, undertakings. The parades are what most people remember, and the image that made its way into the history books.

http://www.alicepaul.org/alicep2.htm#militant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmeline_Pankhurst
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Paul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Burns




Silent Sentinels

At the same time, Paul and her allies began to heavily criticize Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic party for paying lip service to an Amendment he and they would not take up. The following year, shortly after Wilson was sworn in, Paul began to stage protests outside the White House. The participants called themselves "Silent Sentinels for Liberty" and held up signs demanding the vote for women. They protested every day, except Sunday, for more than two years, even after Wilson voiced support for the amendment.


Silent Sentinels for Liberty at the White House

That same year, the United States joined the fight in World War I. Once war was declared, public physical attacks on the Sentinels began to occur. The women refused to relent against the argument that we were at war, and should wait some more. A series of arrests ensued over the next few months, and each time women chose jail time over paying fines. Alice Paul was arrested in October of 1917, and sentenced to seven months for obstructing sidewalk traffic. She, along with many other Silent Sentinels, were sent to Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. There Paul began the hunger strike that nearly cost her her life, but which ultimately helped give us the right to vote.

Alarmed at the state of her health, prison officials began to force feed Paul and several other Sentinels who were striking. Sometimes they used a tube to force liquid into their stomachs. Sometimes they forced maggot infested oatmeal or soup into their mouths, then held them closed. This was all while they were strapped down. My eyes well up with tears even writing about it. But what happened next makes Blatch's quote at the top of this diary partially untrue. Blood did indeed spill.




Night of Terror

On November 15, 1917, the Warden of Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered 40 of his guards on what is now known as the Night of Terror.

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and with their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic." They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Why Women Vote
http://www.fwhc.org/why-women-vote.htm

The details of the Night of Terror were the last straw. Public outrage and opposition had been building as news leaked that there were hunger strikes and forced feedings, but everything boiled to a head after the Night of Terror. Everyone from ordinary folks to politicians in Washington began to talk about the women and their plight. Demands issued from many quarters that they be released, which they finally were, on November 27 and 28 of 1917, many after nearly half a year in prison.

In January of 1918, Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and Congress voted on it soon thereafter, failing the 2/3 majority test by two votes. American women campaigned vigorously that election year to unseat anti-suffragist incumbents, and were successful. The amendment passed the following year, 1919, by a landslide, and started to make it's way around the country to be ratified.

War of the Roses

By the summer of 1920, 35 states had ratified the 19th Amendment, and 36 were needed for it to become an official part of our founding document. It came down to Tennessee, and a War of Roses during the dog days of summer. Both pro- and anti-suffrage factions from across America made their way to Nashville to duke it out over votes in the Tennessee legislature. Members of the factions and politicians wore yellow roses to show their support for suffrage, and red roses to show their opposition to suffrage.

On August 18th, amidst a sea of red and yellow roses, the roll call for votes went out, and came back 2 votes shy. Another roll call was made, and this time, Rep. Banks Turner crossed the line to the suffrage side. One vote shy. A third, and final roll call was made, and this time, a young man by the name of Harry Burn, wearing a red rose, crossed over to the suffragists side. Pandemonium ensued.

With his "yea," Burn had delivered universal suffrage to all American women. The outraged opponents to the bill began chasing Representative Burn around the room. In order to escape the angry mob, Burn climbed out one of the third-floor windows of the Capitol. Making his way along a ledge, he was able to save himself by hiding in the Capitol attic.

When he was later questioned as to why he had voted for it, despite wearing a red rose, he explained that what people saw was the red rose on his jacket, but they didn't see that in the pocket behind it was a telegraph from his mother in East Tennessee. It read:

"Dear Son: Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I noticed some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt [Carrie Chapman Catt] put the 'rat' in ratification. Signed, ~ Your Mother." Febb Ensminger Burn.


"The young women of today--free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation --should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price... the debt that each generation owes to the past, it must pay to the future."
~ Abigail Scott Dunaway



Alice Paul 1901

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/3/225222/3769