Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

by Sarah Vowell

  Numerous court cases have been filed to keep the Secret Service or the Department of the Interior from closing or limiting protesters’ access to Lafayette Square because of concerns for the safety of the president (or the park’s foliage). In 1974, after nearly a decade of litigation pursued by a coalition of Quakers, Vietnam War protesters, and both Jews for Urban Justice and the Action Committee on American-Arab Relations, the District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a ruling against discrimination in the issuing of permits and chastised the National Park Service’s periodic attempts to curb demonstrations in Lafayette Square because “use of parks for public assembly and airing of opinions is historic in our democratic society, and one of its cardinal values.” Regarding the president’s safety, Judge Harold Leventhal opined that in a democracy, “the President cannot be kept in a steel room away from the public.”

  Among the scores of protests held in Lafayette Park during the administration of Barack Obama, environmentalists have sounded off against genetically modified foods and the construction of a new oil pipeline; Muslims have prayed en masse to protest Israel’s incursion in the Gaza Strip; immigration reformers have denounced the president’s deportation policies; members of the Tea Party have commemorated Tax Day carrying signs proclaiming, “Give me liberty . . . NOT DEBT”; and Students to Free Tibet have picketed the visiting Chinese president with signs marked, “Tibet is not a part of China.”

  If those Tibetans held up that same placard calling for Tibetan independence in China and/or Tibet, they would undoubtedly be arrested and charged with “splittism,” the Chinese government’s name for separatist outbursts it deems a threat to national harmony. In Lafayette Square, separatist outbursts are just called Tuesday—or Wednesday, Thursday, etc.

  It would please Lafayette that the pleasant patch of grass bearing his name is where all sorts of splittists, foreign and domestic, routinely air their grievances. After all, the only reason there’s a statue of him staring at the White House is because as a teenager he defied his father-in-law’s edict to settle into a boring job at the French court, explaining afterward, “I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence.”

  The tradition of protest in Lafayette Park dates back to the World War I era, when the disagreeable dames in the National Woman’s Party picketed President Woodrow Wilson for years, demanding his support in their campaign to pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. Which sounds so upstanding. It wasn’t. The abuse those women suffered in the name of suffrage is one of American history’s more upsetting episodes. Daring to demand, during wartime, the basic and sacred right to vote, the NWP’s “Silent Sentinels” picketing Wilson were beaten by male passersby as the police looked on without coming to the women’s aid, arrested repeatedly for “blocking traffic,” and jailed in an unsanitary prison workhouse. When Alice Paul, the NWP’s incarcerated Quaker leader, refused to eat her hellhole prison’s vermin-infested food, authorities answered her hunger strike by strapping her down and ramming a tube funneling raw eggs down her throat. All because the NWP protesters would stand in front of the White House or the statue of Lafayette and burn President Wilson’s war speeches about how “the world must be made safe for democracy” when the only American women who had the right to vote were the ones living in the handful of mostly Western states where it was legal. The NWP’s mission was the passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment ensuring women’s suffrage at the national level. The bill was named for the suffragist who crashed the centennial celebration at Independence Hall on July 4, 1876, proclaiming, “We ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.”

  Before the Anthony Amendment was renamed the Nineteenth and ratified in 1920, Evelyn Wotherspoon Wainwright of the National Woman’s Party walked up to the statue of Lafayette in Lafayette Square on September 16, 1918, and gave a speech. Married to a naval commander who happened to be Benjamin Franklin’s great-great-grandson, Wainwright prayed to the graven image of Lafayette, since neither the president nor Congress seemed to be listening.

  “We, the women of the United States,” she told the bronze Lafayette, “denied the liberty which you helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years, turn to you to plead for us. Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in the hearts of the American people.”

  She beseeched the inanimate Frenchman, “Let that outstretched hand of yours pointing to the White House recall to him”—President Wilson—“his words and promises, his trumpet call for all of us, to see that the world is made safe for democracy. As our army now in France spoke to you there, saying here we are to help your country fight for liberty, will you not speak here and now for us, a little band with no army, no power but justice and right, no strength but in our Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence; and win a great victory again in this country by giving us the opportunity we ask—to be heard through the Susan B. Anthony amendment.”

  She then echoed the words uttered by the American officer in Paris on July 4, 1917. “Lafayette,” she said, “we are here!”

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  ACKNOWL
EDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my longtime, long-suffering editor, publisher, and friend, Geoffrey Kloske of Riverhead Books. Also at Riverhead, Caty Gordon, Maureen Klier, Lauren Kolm, Helen Yentus, Lisa D’Agostino, Madeline McIntosh, Susan Petersen Kennedy, and Jynne Martin pitched in. Much gratitude to David Levinthal for his cover photograph and Teddy Newton for his illustrations. At Simon and Schuster Audio, Elisa Shokoff was dreamy per usual and Mike Noble was no slouch. At Steven Barclay Agency, Steven Barclay, Sara Bixler, Kathryn Barcos, and Eliza Fischer were as thoughtful as they were organized, which is saying something. I also appreciate Ted Thompson’s backup, Jaime Wolf’s lawyering, Gabe Taurman’s interview transcriptions, and David Sedaris and Hugh Hamrick’s hospitality in Paris. Shout-out to Ira Glass for editing my piece on Lafayette’s return to America in 1824 for This American Life. I am especially grateful to my traveling companions Jonathan Sherman, Wesley Stace, Amy Vowell, and Owen Brooker.

  Thanks also to Ranger Linda Williams at Colonial National Historical Park; Amy Atticks, Anna Berkes, Peggy Cornett, Andrea Gray, Ellen Hickman, Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, and Susan Stein at Monticello; Susan Schoelwer and Mary Thompson at Mount Vernon; Jim Bradley, Samantha Lacher, and Mark Schneider at Colonial Williamsburg; Xavier Comte at Conseil Général Haute-Loire; and Philip Breeden, Christopher Palmer, and Mark Taplin at the United States embassy in Paris.

  Additional help, information, advice, and cheer provided by: J. J. Abrams, Barbara Barclay, Garth Bixler, Eric Bogosian, Peter Carlin, Gilbert de Chambrun, René de Chambrun, Thibault de Chambrun, Katherine Fletcher, Will Garrison at Arrowhead, Michael Giacchino, Daniel Handler, John Hodgman, Hayley Holen, Nick Hornby, Lisa Leingang, Tom Levenson, Seth Mnookin, John Petrizzo, Kate Porterfield, Jon Ronson, Alexandra Shiva, Abbey Stace, Travis Tonn, Janie Vowell, Pat Vowell, and Stu Zicherman.