Why Women Should Vote
by Rosalind Benton
The 2020 pandemic and the social unrest we are currently experiencing have completely obscured what should have been a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment enabling women to vote. Thousands of women endangered their well-being in their dedicated pursuit of that privilege.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are well known in the suffrage movement. Women had virtually no rights when Stanton was a young girl in a prosperous family, A woman could not own property, not even the clothes on her back. If a woman earned wages, they were not hers, they belonged to her husband. If a woman inherited money or property, it did not belong to her, it belonged to her husband and he could do with it whatever he chose. Most colleges did not admit women, and divorce was practically unheard of, even if there were spousal abuse. If a woman did divorce for any reason, the custody of her children would automatically be awarded to her husband.
Stanton was the primary organizer of the first Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. She met Anthony in 1851 and they formed a lifetime friendship and collaboration. Stanton wrote many of Anthony’s speeches and when her children were grown, they traveled extensively promoting women’s rights. They worked tirelessly until their deaths in 1902 and 1906 respectively.
Alice Paul dedicated her life to the pursuance of women’s rights. Her fearless actions put her life in danger and compromised her health.
She was born in 1885 in Mount Laurel, NJ to a Quaker family. Her mother was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and sometimes Alice went with her to meetings.
She graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in biology, and studied political science, sociology and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Master of Arts Degree.
When she went to England to further her studies, she heard Christabel Pankhurst speak in Birmingham. While Paul was at the London School Economics, she joined the militant suffrage group Women’s Social and Political Union led by Christabel and her mother, Emmaline.
The animosity toward suffragettes was extreme and Paul witnessed it directly as she sold a suffragist magazine on street corners. She became a fearless strategist for the organization, sometimes intentionally putting herself in dangerous situations in order to call attention to the cause.
Before a political meeting in 1909, she camped out on the roof of the hall to address the crowd below. She was forced by police to descend as crowds cheered her on. She, Lucy Burns and
other suffragettes tried to enter the event, but they were beaten by police and taken into custody.
Paul was involved in several instances of civil disobedience while in Great Britain. She was arrested seven times and served three jail terms. During one arrest, she refused to put on a prison uniform. The female matrons tried unsuccessfully to remove her clothes, so male guards were summoned to help. She achieved her goal, the outcry of lack of decency provided more press for the movement.
During three prison terms, she started a hunger strike. During the first two terms, she was released before her month was up, but the third time, the warden ordered twice daily force feedings until the end of her sentence. Force feeding was tortuous. The person was either held down on a bed or tied to a chair which was tipped back. A rubber tube filled with a mixture of milk and raw eggs was either forced up the nose, or down the throat. If the mixture was forced down the throat, a steel gap was pushed into the mouth and screwed open. Damage could be done to the tissue in the nose and throat, the windpipe could be punctured, teeth could be broken, and there could be vomiting and choking.
Paul developed severe gastritis after the third feeding and was carried out of prison. Her health was permanently affected. She returned to the U.S. to recover, but also to plan for her suffrage work there.
When Paul returned to the U.S., she began a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania and began speaking out for women’s rights.
She organized the Woman Suffrage Procession, which was held on March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Paul was adept at organizing volunteers who recruited suffragists from all over the country to march in the parade down Pennsylvania Ave. There were numerous legal and political struggles to secure that location for the parade route.
The parade was a stunning spectacle. It’s estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 women participated. The Grand Marshall was a woman on horseback accompanied by a replica of the Liberty Bell. Riding behind her dressed in a flowing white gown and blue cape was Inez Milholland, a labor lawyer. There were bands, banners and floats.
There was justifiable concern about the women’s safety. Though Paul had asked for more police officers to enforce boundaries, the number was greatly inadequate. Some spectators were supporters, but others were hecklers and many of them surged into the street. Over 200 people were treated for injuries. The parade route was restored and concluded at Memorial Constitution Hall.
Paul formed her own National Woman’s Party, advocating for a national amendment for suffrage rather than a state by state process. In January 1917, the NWP began picketing in
front of the White House. Silent Sentinels they were called, dressed in white, carrying banners 6 days/wk.
The U.S. entered WW1 in April 1917. Tensions were high and many people viewed the Silent Sentinels as being disloyal to the country. Beginning in June of 1917, picketers were arrested for obstructing traffic, though they were merely standing on either side of the gates. Many were convicted and when they refused to pay their fines, they were sent to Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.
Conditions were brutal. They were denied the status of political prisoners and forced to strip naked, sprayed with water and given rough dirty uniforms to wear. Cells were dirty and cold. They weren’t allowed to contact their families. “The beans, hominy, rice, cornmeal, and cereal all had worms in them,” Doris Stevens later wrote in her book, Jailed for Freedom.
In October of 1917, Paul and ten other women were arrested once again in front of the White House. They were given sentences of varying lengths depending on prior infractions. Paul was sentenced to seven months in District Jail. Some women were released after two weeks of solitary confinement, having had no exercise or visitors and fed only bread and water. Paul was so weak that she was transferred to the prison hospital. No one was allowed to see her. She began a hunger strike. She was visited on several occasions by a prison doctor whom she finally surmised was attempting to prove her insane and put her on the psychiatric ward. He ordered the round the clock nurses to “observe” her every hour, even during the night, so they would turn on the light and look at her. She got virtually no sleep. The nights were filled with cries, shrieks and moans of the other inmates who did have psychiatric problems. He also ordered force feedings three times a day which went on for three weeks. At one point they even boarded up the lower portion of her only window.
Paul’s fellow advocators devised clever means to contact her getting instructions and encouragement from her.
In November, while Paul was still in District Jail, forty-one Silent Sentinels from sixteen states picketed at the White House. They too were arrested. November 14, 1917 became known as The Night of Terror. Following their arrest, the prison warden ordered guards to brutalize dozens of them who refused to do their assigned work. Lucy Burns was handcuffed to her cell with her hands over her head, so she had to stand all night. Dora Lewis was pushed into her cell so hard, she suffered a concussion. Another woman had a heart attack while witnessing the violence, and another was lifted by guards and slammed down over a metal bench.
Conditions here were even worse than before as now they were housed in the men’s prison with male guards. It was cold and dark. Inside the cells were iron beds with thin straw pads, and an open toilet that flushed from the outside. Women were threatened with a strait jacket and a buckle gag if they spoke. Still, they were not allowed any visitors. One young woman’s mother came to the prison asking to give her daughter some warm clothing as the weather had
gotten cold. She was assured that she was fine. The prison staff tried to force the women to lose hope, abandon their cause and never picket again.
Finally, the husband of one of the prisoners shared this event with the press and two weeks later, they were released, forever referred to as “the iron-jawed angels.”
During the ensuing months, the Silent Sentinels continued protesting, were arrested and went on hunger strikes many more times. even though in 1918, the D.C. Court of Apeals had vacated their previous convictions.
Protests remained non-violent, but copies of Wilson’s speeches were burned and in February 1919, on the eve of the Senate vote on the nineteenth amendment, they burned an image of Wilson in effigy because they blamed him for not convincing the senators to pass the amendment.
It wasn’t until May of that year that the House of Representatives passed the nineteenth amendment, with the Senate following suit in June, two and a half years after The Silent Sentinels began their protests. Ratification occurred on Aug. 18, 1920 and it was certified on Aug. 26th of that year.
On Nov. 2, 1920 more than eight million women voted for the very first time.
There is more work to be done, but we should never forget the courage and resilience of the thousands of women who fought relentlessly for our rights and we should never take the privilege of casting a ballot lightly.