Dear Daughter and Friends, I saw some of these same pictures in the WWI Museum in Kansas City last May with my sister, Kelly, including the one about Woodrow Wilson ordering the suffragette to be force fed ... amazing! Less than 100 yrs ago in THIS country!! These were truly the first pitbulls with lipstick! Please pass on to remind others how far we have come and how important it is not to go back, no matter what your political leanings are ...
This is the story of our mothers and grandmothers (and some great-grandmothers); they lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were were jailed for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the right to vote.
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women charged with 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.' They beat Lucy Burns (above), chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping.
They hurled Dora Lewis (above) 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.
Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food -- all of it colorless slop -- was infested with worms.
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul (above), embarked on a hunger strike they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because -- why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)
Last week I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could step into the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York )
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw 'Iron Jawed Angels', too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was -- with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote had become valuable to her "all over again."
I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
(Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at National Woman's Party headquarters, Jackson Place, Washington D.C. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right)
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote Democratic, Republican or independent party -- remember to vote.
(Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.")
History is waiting to be made.
