Today in Herstory: The “Prison Special” Tour Comes to a Successful End (10mar1919)
(please note that the katharine hepburn referenced below is actor katharine hepburn's mother)
Today in Herstory: The “Prison Special” Tour Comes to a Successful End
March 10, 1919: A worthy finale to a spectacularly successful 23-day nationwide rail tour by the “Prison Special” tonight, as 3,500 people greeted the suffragists who had formerly been imprisoned for peacefully picketing along the White House fence.
Vida Milholland
An elaborate pageant of color and light opened the Carnegie Hall ceremonies in which “Justice,” played by Vida Milholland, received the women of the nations in which equal suffrage had already been achieved. She was then approached by a woman in chains and twenty black-garbed mourners. They represented America and pled for a place in the light of true democracy. The pageant concluded with “Justice” holding aloft her torch and singing “The Women’s Marseillaise.”
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“The militants are here, and we haven’t broken anything, not even broken down,” said Louisine Havemeyer, who then outlined the successes of the trip. There was even more applause when she announced that the National Woman’s Party, sponsors of the tour, now had enough pledges of support from members of the new, and now Republican-controlled Congress to pass the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment and send it to the State legislatures for ratification.
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An unexpected, but welcome event occurred near the end of tonight’s program. A sailor asked to take the stage on behalf of the Soldiers’ Sailors’ and Marines’ Protective Association and 24 other men in uniform who accompanied him to the gala. He then denounced the brutal treatment given by fellow service members to the suffragists peacefully protesting outside a hall where President Wilson was giving a speech on March 4th.
Tonight’s meeting capped a final busy day of activity. In the morning the train stopped at Hartford, Connecticut, where the ex-prisoners were greeted by a large group of banner-bearing citizens and escorted to City Hall, where Mayor Kinsella welcomed them. Katharine Hepburn – suffragist, birth control legalization advocate and head of the Connecticut branch of the National Woman’s Party – opened a rally on the City Hall steps in honor of the visitors. Hepburn praised the courage of the women, then questioned the double standard used by many in condemning woman suffrage “militance” by contrasting the Woman’s Party actions such as picketing, or burning the President’s speeches, with the violent revolutions of men seeking a voice in their government:
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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/03/10/today-in-herstory-the-prison-special-tour-comes-to-a-successful-end/