HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET, IF WE EVER KNEW...
WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTEThis 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.
The women were innocent and defenseless,
but they were jailed nonetheless
for picketing the White House,
carrying signs asking for the 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
wrongly convicted of
'obstructing sidewalk traffic'
(Lucy Burns)
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)
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 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...
(Alice Paul)
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...
She was tortured like this for weeks
until word was smuggled out to the press...
Memory of Sufferegette Prisoners 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'
Reprinted from
_Houston Independent Media_ 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...
History is being made
Book:
Iron-Jawed Angels
The Suffrage Militancy of the
National Woman's Party
1912-1920
Linda G. Ford
UNVERSITY
PRESS OF
AMERICA
Lanham, New York, London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in -Publication Data
Ford, Linda, 1949
Iron-Jawed Angels: the suffrage militancy of the
National Woman's Party, 1912-1920
299 p. 22 cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Women-Suffrage-United States-History-
20th century. 2.United States-Politics and
government-1913-192. I Title
JK1896.F67 1991
With love, respect and gratitude
_Rev Alicia Lyon Folberth_
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