"Mr. President how long must women wait for liberty?" In 1916, immediately after speaking these words to a standing room only audience, 30-year-old Inez Milholland collapsed on stage. She died 10 weeks later and became known as the United States woman suffrage movement's first martyr.
The upcoming election reminds me that in less than two years, I will be old enough to vote. As we all know, this election will be the first time for many Rocklin High students to vote. Though it may seem strange that my peers are able to vote, it is not strange at all that half of them are female.
However, less than a century ago, women in the United States were denied the right to vote. During the last years of the suffrage movement, Alice Paul led the National Women's Party (NWP) in a nonviolent campaign for suffrage. Though nonviolent, the NWP was considered militant by its critics because of their unprecedented and controversial tactics. The NWP did more than conventions and parades. In 1917, they began picketing President Wilson. For months, women, who became known as silent sentinels, stood around the White House silently holding their banners every day of the week, except on Sundays. During World War I, people criticized them for continuing to picket the president during war. But these woman only embraced the opportunity to expose Wilson's inconsistencies. The banners contained phrases such as "Kaiser Wilson," "Democracy should begin at home," and even excerpts from Wilson's own speeches. Soon pickets began serving jail sentences of ever-increasing length for "obstructing traffic." In jail, women were subject to horrible conditions. They went on hunger strikes and endured force feeding. In 1918, Wilson finally advocated for suffrage, in 1919 both the House and Senate passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and by 1920 3/4 of the states had ratified it. So, 72 years after the Seneca Falls Convention, the 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution.
Since I just spent hours working on a project about suffragist leader Alice Paul, I'm pretty sure I have enough information to go on for a while about these hard-core women. But I'll save you from that.
Anyhow, the freedoms we have in this country were all bought at a price.
1 comment:
We share an avid interest in suffragettes!
Thanks to the suffragettes, America has women voters and women candidates, and we are a better country for it!
Women have voices and choices! Just like men.
But few people know ALL of the suffering that our suffragettes had to go through to get the vote for women, and what life was REALLY like for women before they did.
Now you can subscribe FREE to an exciting e-mail series that goes behind the scenes in the lives of eight of the world's most famous women to reveal the shocking and sometimes heartbreaking truth of HOW women won the vote.
Thrilling, dramatic, sequential short story e-mail episodes have readers from all over the world raving about the original historical series, "The Privilege of Voting."
Discover how two beautiful and powerful suffragettes, two presidential mistresses, First Lady Edith Wilson, First Daughter Alice Roosevelt, author Edith Wharton and dancer Isadora Duncan set the stage for women to FINALLY win the vote.
Read this FREE e-mail series on your coffeebreaks and fall in love with these amazing women!
Subscribe free at
www.CoffeebreakReaders.com/subscribe.html
Post a Comment