More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Today saw yet another example of the outrageous treatment given to peaceful suffragists, who are picketing President Wilson over his failure to support passage and ratification of the Susan B. Anthony (woman suffrage) Amendment while he tirelessly calls for democracy around the rest of world.
After all they’ve gone through, from extremes of weather to attacks by hostile crowds, arrests, and lengthy jail sentences, it’s not easy to shock the suffragists who have been picketing President Wilson over his refusal to support or work for the Susan B. Anthony (woman suffrage) Amendment while he vigorously promotes democracy abroad. But today they were caught by surprise.
Earlier today, forty-one brave suffragists answered the question of whether recent mass arrests followed by increasingly lengthy prison sentences would be enough to prevent American citizens from asserting their right to peacefully voice their demand for political equality. The answer was a unanimous and defiant “No!”
The already outrageous treatment of peaceful suffragist pickets by the authorities became even more disgraceful today. Alice Paul, serving two sentences totaling seven months for picketing outside the White House fence, has now begun to undergo force-feeding, imposed on her seventy-eight hours after beginning a hunger strike.
Up until now the Susan B. Anthony (woman suffrage) Amendment had been just one of many issues to be dealt with by the always overburdened House Judiciary Committee.
As in ancient fights for liberty the crusaders for freedom symbolized their protest against those responsible for injustice by consigning their hollow phrases to the flames, so we, on behalf of thousands of suffragists, in the same way today protest against the action of the President and his party in delaying the liberation of American women.
No matter at what hour Colby’s proclamation is made, it will be a time of triumph and celebration for all who have worked so tirelessly and so long for woman suffrage. But by no means will there be a single commemoration. There are plans for a variety of observances from coast to coast over the next few days. Then it will be time for each individual suffragist and every suffrage organization to decide what to do now that all bans on women voting have been explicitly and permanently invalidated by the U.S. Constitution.
The suffrage battle is far from over, but it’s a good sign that so many National Woman’s Party members have now proven that they will not be intimidated, nor compromise on things as basic as their right to protest or to vote, and that even the President now seems to have a growing concern about their welfare (or, perhaps, about their increasing notoriety, sympathy from the public, and political influence).
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: feminist milestones; Seneca Falls Revisited (the first woman’s rights convention in the country!); gender and equity must be at the center of the response to the COVID crisis; polling shows widespread support for women’s equality; and how PACs and donors can make a difference in electing women.
“As long as women go to jail for petty offenses to secure freedom for the women of America, then we will continue to go to jail. Wherever efforts for liberty have been persecuted, liberty has in the end prevailed.”