The first suffrage picket line leaving the National Woman's Party headquarters to march to the White House gates on January 10, 1917.
(The following written by Connie Schultz,
The Cleveland Plain Dealer)
This is the story of our grandmothers and 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.
Lucy Burns
“obstructing sidewalk traffic.”
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.
Dora Lewis
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.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf
Alice Paul
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?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
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.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, 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, she said, had become valuable to her “all over again.”
HBO released the movie on video and DVD. 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.
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.
If you have not seen the movie, Iron Jawed Angels, I urge you to
take the time to watch it. It is on youtube, in 12 segments.
It is long but sooooo worth your time.
You will NEVER again pass up the chance to voice your opinion by VOTING!
See you in the booths on Tuesday!
Joining Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday
