Votes for Women!: Chapters 11–14

She said that she was “predisposed to side with, and not against, the negro in any question of racial difference,” but she wasn’t willing to risk the success of the parade to take a stand for the African American marchers.

She explained that the African American women were to march with the all-black contingent at the back of the parade.

The parade ended with a tableau, or silent play, staged on the steps of the U.S. Treasury Building.

This would not be the last time that Wilson would be upstaged by a group of suffragists.

Alice Paul immediately began collecting notarized depositions from the marchers to document the failures of the police department.

“Never was I so ashamed of our national capital before,” said Anna Howard Shaw. “The women in the parade showed wonderful dignity and self-respect by keeping cool in the midst of insult and lewd remarks.”

Another said, “There seemed to be a tacit agreement to make our efforts a failure.”

They sold buttons, flags, banners, and sashes, and they solicited funds by writing letters and making phone calls.

The Congressional Union then fell under the auspices of the National Woman’s Party, and the leadership of both groups was the same until the Congressional Union disbanded the following year, leaving the National Woman’s Party as Paul’s political base.

As they started out, some of the women found the banners unwieldy, but they tightened their grips on the wooden rods and kept moving forward.

The weather in Washington, DC, can be erratic, especially in winter.

After a balmy first day of protesting, a bitterly cold wind blew in.

“I know some people think that it is cowardice and all that sort of thing to take the present attitude,” Anna Howard Shaw wrote, “but it requires a good deal more courage to work steadily and steadfastly for forty or fifty years to gain an end, than it does to do a [sic] impulsive rash thing and lose it.”

“Before Alice Paul and the pickets came, days would pass when the word suffrage didn’t appear in the dispatches,” a journalist wrote in the New York Sun.

Some newspapers that initially criticized the picketers came to respect their tenacity and sincerity.

But to see a thousand women—young women, middle-aged women, and old women—and there were women in the line who had passed their three score years and ten—marching in a rain that almost froze as it fell; to see them standing and marching and holding their heavy banners, momentarily growing heavier—holding them against a wind that was half a gale—hour after hour; until their gloves were wet and their clothes soaked through...was a sight to impress even the jaded sense of one who has seen much.

They needed to convey the right message to the president and the passersby, and to people seeing the photographs in the newspapers.

An article in the New American Woman, a conservative suffrage journal, said, “Good ladies, why all this rudeness? Of what avail is all this bombast? Of what combination of gray matter is that which leads gently bred women to violate all conventional rules of polite assemblages? Women of no class nor of any party can ever be excused for thus disporting themselves.”

An article in the New American Woman, a conservative suffrage journal, said, “Good ladies, why all this rudeness? Of what avail is all this bombast? Of what combination of gray matter is that which leads gently bred women to violate all conventional rules of polite assemblages? Women of no class nor of any party can ever be excused for thus disporting themselves.”

An article in the New American Woman, a conservative suffrage journal, said, “Good ladies, why all this rudeness? Of what avail is all this bombast? Of what combination of gray matter is that which leads gently bred women to violate all conventional rules of polite assemblages? Women of no class nor of any party can ever be excused for thus disporting themselves.”

This was the beginning of Paul’s most blatant militancy.

They waited until right before the Russian envoy was scheduled to arrive to unfurl their banner.

Near the National Woman’s Party headquarters, a second mob accosted several suffragists carrying banners.

They quoted the First Amendment guarantee of “the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

They quoted the First Amendment guarantee of “the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The conditions in both facilities were deplorable.

A cook at the workhouse signed an affidavit testifying that “the beans, hominy, rice, corn meal...and cereal have all had worms in them. Sometimes the worms float on top of the soup. Often they are found in the corn bread.”

In response, Lucy Burns wrote a note to the other suffragists: “I think this riotous feast which has just passed our doors is the last effort of the institution to dislodge all of us who can be dislodged. They think there is nothing in our souls above fried chicken.”

Burns described the feeding tube in clinical, almost impersonal terms: “It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into stomach feels like a ball of lead. Left nostril, throat, and muscles of neck very sore all night.”

“I felt that I was in the midst of a football scrimmage....My feet were completely off the floor, my arms and shoulders were almost twisted out of joint and my back was bruised,” the woman said.

When the inmates entered the courtroom, reporters and family members were shocked at how thin and haggard they appeared.

Representative Frederick C. Hicks of New York left his dying wife’s bedside to that he could vote yes; she was said to have been an ardent suffragist, and it was a way he could pay his respects to her.

“We had a sort of perpetual flame going in an urn...,” Alice Paul said, describing it. “It was really very dramatic, because when President Wilson went to Paris for the peace conference [to set the terms among countries at the end of World War I], he was always issuing some wonderful, idealistic statement that was impossible to reconcile with what he was doing at home.

“National woman’s suffrage is at hand,” a committee report stated. “It may be delayed but it cannot be defeated, and we covet for Tennessee the signal honor of being the thirty-sixth and last State necessary to consummate this great reform.”

“National woman’s suffrage is at hand,” a committee report stated. “It may be delayed but it cannot be defeated, and we covet for Tennessee the signal honor of being the thirty-sixth and last State necessary to consummate this great reform.”

As a result, some legislators made herculean efforts to cast their ballots.

For several days, Tennessee officials tried to use technicalities to overthrow the decision.

“This was the final culmination of the women’s fight,” she said, “and women, irrespective of factions, should have been allowed to be present when the proclamation was signed.”

“This was the final culmination of the women’s fight,” she said, “and women, irrespective of factions, should have been allowed to be present when the proclamation was signed.”

Once suffrage was won, the National American Woman Suffrage Association changed its name and its mission: In 1920, it reestablished itself as the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating women about political issues.