Volume 12 , Issue 35

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - 90 Years Ago (Aug. 18, 1920)

Conferring over ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at National Woman's Party headquarters, Jackson Place Washington, D.C. Left to right: Mrs. lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right).

Women endured for the right to vote 90 years ago today. This is the story of our mothers and grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. 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 wrongly convicted of 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.

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.

Thus unfolded the Night of Terror on November 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occuquan 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 (colorless slop) was infested with terrible vermin.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, 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. When was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

Follow this Suffrage Prisoners PDF Link, The Library of congress, Amerian Memory, Women of Protest, Photographs form the Records of the National Woman's Party, gives the following information:

"The following individuals depicted in Women of Protest were among the many National Woman's Party activists who were arrested and imprisoned for their role in suffrage protests. An asterisk next to the individual's name indicates that an image portrays them under arrest, in jail, wearing prison garb, or as speakers on the 'Prison Special,' the cross-country speaking tour to several major American cities undertaken by 26 former inmates in February-March 1919 to inform audiences about their experience as political prisoners. Among those listed below who participated in the "Prison Special," are Pauline Adams, Edith Ainge, Berthe Arnold, Lillian Ascough, Abby Scott Baker, Lucy G. Branham, Lucy Burns, Sarah T. Colvin, Lucy Ewing, L. W. E. Havemeyer, Vida Milholland, Mary Nolan, Elizabeth S. Rogers, Mabel Vernon, and Sue Shelton White."   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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