Suffragist Confront Senate Demanding Their Rights Stolen with America’s Entry into World War One

 

National Woman's Party Pickets at the White House 1917

Washington D.C., Aug. 9, 1917 —On this day the women of the National Women’s Party (NWP) were given the rare opportunity to testify in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee. The women were not there speaking on their main objective of the right to vote, but of the more central and guaranteed right to protest.

Since January of 1917 the NWP led by activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had been acting as “Silent Sentinels” and directing other women in silent picketing of the White House hoping to get President Woodrow Wilson to change his mind and back a Constitutional Amendment giving women the right to vote in the United States.

In meeting with the Senate committee, they hoped to convince the senators to provide them with an exemption from the Espionage Act passed in June. The Espionage Act was a broad law that allowed authorities to jail anyone they felt was interfering with the way the U.S. conducted the war, and this included any form of protest the war, the draft or the president.

The picketing had been ongoing with consistent attendance, and women it garnered attention. By August there were approximately 1,000 women involved in the picketing and 1,000 who came to support or jeer the women, all too often after the U.S. had entered the war the crowds were more aggressive and attacked the women protesting yelling, they were unpatriotic, duplicitous and anti-American. Every week the condemnation grew.

In part because under Paul’s direction the picketers began comparing Wilson to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany the primary enemy in most American’s opinion. During the summer of 1917 33 women had been arrested multiple times. The women shared this experience with the Senate committee. They also shared that they had been attacked and assaulted sometimes even by the military.

June also contained a surprise for Paul w3hich the Senate committee brought up several times in this hearing. Paul and 33 other women were arrested for “Obstructing Traffic,” and sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan Workhouse, in Lorton, Virginia. This was a jail for nonviolent offenders. After three days President Wilson pardoned them hoping that this act of goodwill would lead to reciprocal action from the NWP, but it did not.

The Senate Committee closed testimony and adjourned without an indication of what they would do, but it became obvious in the days ahead when there was no acknowledgment of the hearing. However, while there were 100s of arrests with women taken to Occoquan Workhouse there were no arrests were made using the Espionage Act.

As summer turned into fall arrests were made for obstructing traffic and unlawful assembly because the picketers continued to attract large and usually hostile crowds. Paul and Burns stopped directing the action to join the protestors in October. Paul later explained that this was strategic and to begin the next phase of action from prison. After her arrest she informed a municipal court judge that she had no obligation to obey laws when she had no part in the making of them. She was sentenced to seven months in Occoquan Workhouse for picketing at the White House.

She was joined by Burns and at least 45 others who demanded to be acknowledged as political prisoners. The women took another step and went on a hinger strike, refusing to eat. Prison authorities had no idea what to do and after consultations with psychiatrists ordered force feeding. On the night of November 14^th, a mob of prison guards assaulted and beat the women and used inhumane means to force feed them.

This brutal treatment was surreptitiously passed to newspapers with full accounts of the brutality, in turn, this garnered public sympathy and support for suffrage despite public sentiment that criticism of the government during World War I was unpatriotic.

This proved to be the turning point. In January President Wilson ordered all suffragists be released and announced his support for suffrage. On January 10, 1918, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the suffrage amendment, The Senate voted in favor a year later. Almost exactly three years after being unable to convince the Senate committee to endorse their right to protest, the suffragettes saw the 19^th Amendment ratified.

 

Sources:

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul

https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NWP_project_ch3.shtml

https://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nwp-militant#:~:text=In%201917%2C%20they%20renamed%20their,D.