The public call for woman’s suffrage had been voiced for more than a half century. In 1848, the Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, adopted a resolution calling for the right to vote. Among those gathered were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Frederick Douglass. Advocacy groups followed in these footsteps, most notably the National Woman Suffrage Association (led by Stanton and Anthony) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (led by Lucy Stone) that combined forces as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890. NAWSA pushed for states to pass suffrage amendments. It found modest success in the West; in 1869, Wyoming became the first state to pass a suffrage amendment while still a territory. Its territorial legislature declared, “We will remain out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without the women.”3 Other western states followed their lead and passed their own amendments: Utah (1870), Colorado (1893), and Idaho (1896). However, from 1896 to 1910, the movement stalled: no new states won amendments and the six states that attempted all failed.4
In the 1910s, the movement was reenergized, in part, by the experiences of American women who took part in the British woman’s suffrage movement. In England, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst, demanded the vote in ways that the media and the male power structure could not ignore: they employed civil disobedience and violence. WSPU tactics included pickets, shouting down politicians, hunger strikes in jail, smashing windows, destroying property, burning down buildings, and destroying art by disfiguring sculptures and slashing paintings. Two Americans, in particular, were forever changed by their experience in England: Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, both of whom would become leaders in the American movement.
Alice Paul, ca. 1915 (photograph published in The Suffragist 3, no. 52, Dec. 25, 1915)
Paul was a Quaker who was committed to nonviolence and women’s rights. She was a trained social worker and had been jailed with the Pankhurtsts in England. In 1910, while in her later twenties, she returned to the United States and brought with her the militancy of the British movement. She went to work in 1913 with the NAWSA-affiliated Congressional Committee that was renamed the Congressional Union later that year.
One of Paul’s first responsibilities was to organize a national suffrage parade in Washington, DC, on March 3, the day before President Wilson’s inauguration. Her direction ensured that the event would create a highly choreographed visual spectacle that foreshadowed how women would keep the issue of suffrage before Wilson throughout his presidency.
Prior to the event, city officials had tried to route the parade down side streets, but Paul had refused. Instead, she had it directed down Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol Building to the White House. The theme of the parade, “The Ideals and Virtues of American Womanhood,” focused on women as active participants in society. She instructed the 5,000 to 8,000 participants to dress in a single color based on their occupations or group affiliation: factory workers, doctors, artists, teachers, and various organizations and colleges. She had tried to discourage African American women from taking part in the event, but when they refused, she moved them to the back of the parade—indicative of how leaders in NAWSA, and later the NWP, completely turned their back on African American women.5
Bain News Service, publisher, “[Hedwig Reicher as Columbia] in Suffrage Pageant,” March 3, 1913 (LC-B2-2501-14, Library of Congress)
Harris and Ewing, Washington, DC, “Inez Milholland Boissevain Preparing to Lead the March 3, 1913, Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC,” March 3, 1913 (photograph published in The Suffragist 8, no. 8, Sept. 1920)
The most prominent visual element of the parade became the participants themselves—the primarily white, middle-class women—marching in the streets for suffrage. Situated in the front were the NAWSA leaders. Behind them were thousands of marchers, twenty-six floats, six golden chariots, ten all-women bands, a model of the Liberty Bell, and a banner behind it that read WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE US ENFRANCHISING THE WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY.6 Inez Milholland, a New York labor lawyer, presented a striking image, dressed in a white robe and riding a white horse.
Before the parade, Harriot Stanton Blatch had stated, “We wished to make the procession a great emotional appeal. The enemy must be converted through his eyes.”7 Instead, an unruly crowd of men largely rejected their demands. During the event, thousands of men lined the streets; some berated the women marchers with insults, projectiles, and physical attacks while the police stood idly by. The end result was a storm of media coverage, a much greater focus on woman’s suffrage, a congressional hearing on the failure by the police to protect the marchers, and a movement more committed than ever to lobby for woman’s suffrage.
In 1914, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were kicked out of NAWSA for being “too British.”8 Immediately thereafter they formed the Congressional Union as an independent organization with its headquarters based in Washington, DC. The Congressional Union—renamed the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in 1917—became the antithesis of NAWSA, whose cautious approach was to politely lobby government officials, including the president, for change. Under Paul’s leadership, the NWP meanwhile embraced nearly all of the British suffrage tactics, except for violence. Paul particularly endorsed escalation, forcing their opponents—the government—to respond, often in repressive ways that strengthened the argument for the suffragists.
Bain News Service, publisher, “Suffragettes Posting Bills,” ca. 1910–1915 (photograph published in The Suffragist 5, no. 83, Aug. 25, 1917)
This course of action was, in part, forced on the movement by the obstinate response of the nation’s leadership. During Wilson’s first year in office, Congressional Union leaders had met with him, informed him about the issues, and implored him to advocate for a federal suffrage amendment. He responded by arguing that suffrage was not for the federal government to pass legislation on but was up to each individual state to decide. The NWP knew that a state-by-state approach would keep suffrage off the table, and so it kept the pressure on Wilson until he finally refused to meet with them.
The NWP next resorted to harassment—shouting Wilson down and embarrassing him when he appeared in public. On December 4, 1916, NWP activists dropped a banner that read MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE? from the balcony of the visitors’ gallery at the U.S. Capitol as he addressed Congress. The banner was quickly torn down, but it caused the room to fall silent as attendees turned their attention away from the president and toward the message that the NWP thrust upon him.
“Campaign in Illinois. One of the big Woman’s Party street banners being swung into place in Chicago by Miss Virginia Arnold, of Washington, national executive secretary of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage,” ca. October 1916 (photograph published in The Suffragist 5, no. 54, Jan. 10, 1917)
The press ridiculed these actions as offensive and unladylike. Others agreed—including NAWSA, whose members abhorred the NWP’s tactics. NAWSA leaders Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw feared that the NWP would alienate Wilson and Southern Democrats, whose support would be needed for a federal amendment. Paul disagreed, and the NWP felt that Wilson could make suffrage happen if he wanted to. The Democrats controlled the Senate, the House, and the presidency, and Wilson had already pushed through items that concerned him with little resistance. He had secured tariff legislation, the Panama Canal, and the U.S. entry into an unpopular war—World War I.9 Thus, the NWP goal was to make the Democrats pay for their inaction. They organized a boycott of all Democrats, even those who supported suffrage, and advocated that women in western states who had the vote should support any candidate other than the Democrats.
Silent Sentinels
“We have got to keep the question before him all the time.”
—Harriot Stanton Blatch10
The NWP escalated its tactic of standing next to the White House gates with banners after their first “silent sentinel” on January 10, 1917. The fir
st banners had been relatively polite, but that approach soon dissolved. The NWP began instead to mock Wilson with his own words. They reprinted phrases from his war speeches that showcased the hypocrisy of his support for democracy abroad while failing to support it at home.
On June 20, 1917, a representative of the new Russian government visited the White House. Outside the gates, Lucy Burns, Dora Lewis, and others stood with a large banner.
To the Russian Envoys
President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia when they say “We are a democracy, help us win the world war so that democracy may survive.”
We the women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty-million American women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement.
Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally.11
On June 22, Burns and Katherine Morey were arrested for “obstructing traffic.” Three days later, twelve more women were arrested for carrying banners. In court, the women were ordered to pay a $25 fine; they refused and spent three days in jail. When one group of six women was brought before the court, one responded by stating, “Not a dollar of your fine will we pay. To pay a fine would be an admission of guilt. We are innocent.”12 From that point on NWP women began to fill the jails.
Wilson detested the tactics of the NWP and the press attention that they received. His secretary and political aide Joseph Tumulty called for a partial press blackout of the pickets, pressuring Washington-area newspapers to keep stories on the NWP to a minimum. Many obliged. The Washington Post refused.13
The Russia banner also enraged conservative suffragists. NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw wrote to Dora Lewis in 1917 and accused the NWP of treasonous activity.14 NAWSA printed objections to the White House pickets in 350 papers across the United States.15 Carrie Catt went a step further. She would at times notify the White House of planned embarrassments by the NWP.16
Despite their detractors, the NWP stepped up their agitation. They followed a pattern of escalation: pickets, jail time, and capitalizing on the press that their actions received. In July and August of 1917, Wilson finally attempted to break this cycle by calling for an end to the arrests and consequently the press attention. So Paul, in turn, upped the ante. The NWP created a banner that compared Wilson to the enemy, German Kaiser Wilhelm II. One banner read FOR 20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN WILSON IS A KAISER. This created an uproar. Women who held the banners were attacked. Paul was knocked down three times, and on one occasion she was dragged the length of the White House sidewalk by an enraged sailor. After each attack, Paul sent out a press release detailing what had transpired.
The courts responded to these new tactics with longer jail sentences. Women were charged with a $25 fine or sixty days in prison at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. Those arrested were charged with obstructing traffic and were denied the right to a trial by jury. Instead, they were sent to prison and housed with the general population.
Harris and Ewing, Washington, DC, “Arrest of White House pickets Catherine Flanagan of Hartford, Connecticut (left), and Madeleine Watson of Chicago (right),” ca. August 1917 (mnwp 160038, Library of Congress)
On October 20, Paul and three others left the NWP office with a banner carrying a phrase that the Wilson administration had used on a poster for a Second Liberty Bond Loan: THE TIME HAS COME WHEN WE MUST CONQUER OR SUBMIT. FOR US THERE CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT. Paul was arrested and sentenced to seven months at the Occoquan Workhouse.
Jailed for Freedom
“Things took a more serious turn than I had planned but it’s happened rather well because we’ll have ammunition against the Administration, and the more harsh and repressive they seem the better.”
—Alice Paul, letter to Dora Lewis from prison, 191717
When Paul arrived at Occoquan, she initiated a hunger strike. Fourteen other women joined her. Each was force-fed three times a day—an extremely painful procedure in which a hard tube is placed down one’s throat and food is deposited into the stomach against one’s will. All of the NWP women who were jailed refused to work. They also demanded to be classified as political prisoners, a demand that was denied.
Paul received particularly brutal treatment. She was placed in solitary confinement and, eventually, a psychopathic ward—a terrifying prospect, considering that prisoners in this ward could be held indefinitely. Paul, however, recognized the tactical advantages of her harsh treatment—news of the force-feeding and the horrid conditions of the prison resulted in a public outcry and greater approval for the suffrage cause.
Harris and Ewing, Washington, DC, “Miss [Lucy] Burns in Occoquan Workhouse, Washington,” ca. November, 1917 (mnwp 274009, Library of Congress)
Still, the government would not relent. NWP activists in Washington, DC, who demonstrated against Paul’s treatment in prison were arrested and also sent to jail. When they entered Occoquan they endured a “Night of Terror” when the warden instructed more than forty guards to brutalize the women, by beating, kicking, choking, and dragging them across the jailhouse floor.
On November 23, many of these same women were brought before a judge. In the courtroom, the press reported on their poor conditions and noted that many were too weak to stand or sit. The judge ordered three women immediately released due to their ill health. Twenty-five others were transferred to the district jail. On November 27, most of the prisoners were released, including Paul, who was on day twenty-two of her hunger strike.
By the end of 1917, the movement was taking a toll on the women, but it was also taking a toll on Wilson to the point where he changed his position on woman’s suffrage. He spoke out in support of a federal amendment for the first time and lobbied his colleagues to do the same. In January 1918, the amendment passed the House 274 to 136. In June a filibuster by Democratic senator James A. Reed of Missouri prevented a vote in the Senate.18
The NWP decided to keep a watch fire (an urn) lit in Lafayette Square as a reminder to Wilson, and to themselves, that they would not quit until an amendment was passed. There, the demonstrators burned copies of Wilson’s speeches and burned an effigy of him in protest. More arrests followed. Paul, Burns, and others were sentenced to ten to fifteen days in prison and placed in underground cells that had been deemed too unsanitary for the general prison population.19 The women initiated a hunger strike and were released after five days.
During the fall of 1918, a federal woman’s suffrage amendment failed to pass the Senate, but it finally succeeded in 1919. On May 21, the House passed the amendment 304 to 89. On June 4, the Senate passed it 56 to 25. From there, the constitutional amendment needed three-fourths of the states to ratify it. The NWP then focused their attention away from Wilson and directed their campaign toward the states where votes were needed most. By March 1920, thirty-five states had ratified, and the struggle came down to Tennessee. The close race was decided when Harry Burn, a twenty-four-year-old legislator, changed his vote in favor of ratification at the insistence of his elderly mother. In August, Tennessee would ratify.20 In celebration, the NWP hung a ratification banner outside its Washington, DC, office.
National Photo Co., Washington, DC, “When Tennessee the 36th state ratified, Aug 18, 1920, Alice Paul, National Chairman of the Woman’s Party, unfurled the ratification banner from Suffrage headquarters,” August, 18, 1920 (mnwp 160068, Library of Congress)
Reflecting on the movement, Doris Stevens noted, “It was the women, not the president, who were exceptional . . . We pushed him the harder.”21 The NWP, and to a lesser degree NAWSA, had forced Wilson to act. They proved that radical tactics were the necessary boost to help the movement succeed. Banners became an essential part of the woman’s suffrage movement. Words led to arrests and arrests led to press coverage about the issues. The media image of the pickets focused both on the banners and the women who held them until the two became
indistinguishable. Doris Stevens asserted, “It is our firm belief that the solid year of picketing, with all its political ramification, did compel the President to abandon his opposition and declare himself for the measure.”22
12
The Lynching Crisis
“Ah, the splendor of that Sunday night dance. The flames beat and curled against the moonlit sky. The church bells chimed. The scorched and crooked thing, self-wounded and chained to his cot, crawled to the edge of the ash with a stifled groan, but the brave and sturdy farmers pricked him back with the bloody pitchforks until the deed was done. Let the eagle scream! Civilization is again safe.”1
—W.E.B. Du Bois
THIS VERSE—INTENTIONALLY SARCASTIC AND GRIM—appeared in the September 1911 issue of the NAACP publication The Crisis and was penned by its editor W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Du Bois was the first African American PhD from Harvard University, the architect of Pan-Africanism, and a founding member of both the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. He was a historian, a sociologist, a poet, and an artist (the director of the pageant The Star of Ethiopia).2 He was the author of numerous books, including The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America. He was also served as editor of The Crisis for nearly a quarter of a century (1910–1934), a position that allowed him to reach a vast audience and a position where he advocated on behalf of numerous social causes, including the campaign against lynching. His primary weapons against this crime: words, emotional appeals, statistics, and visual images.
A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Page 15
