NEVER FORGET:'Night of terror': The suffragists who were beaten and tortured for seeking the vote
(NEVER FORGET that THIS is what happened when women in this supposedly greatest, bestest country in the world demanded their human rights, demanded suffrage. THIS is what the F'N, WOMAN-HATERS would love to see again.
‘Night of terror’: The suffragists who were beaten and tortured for seeking the vote
Suffragists march to the White House in the spring of 1917 to demand voting rights. (AP)
The women were clubbed, beaten and tortured by the guards at the Occoquan Workhouse. The 33 suffragists from the National Woman’s Party had been arrested Nov. 10, 1917, while picketing outside the White House for the right to vote. The male guards at the Northern Virginia prison manacled the party’s co-founder Lucy Burns by her hands to the bars above her cell and forced her to stand all night. Dorothy Day, who would later establish the Catholic Worker houses, had her arm twisted behind her back and was slammed twice over the back of an iron bench. The guards threw suffragist Dora Lewis into a dark cell and smashed her head against an iron bed, knocking her out. Lewis’s cellmate, Alice Cosu, believing Lewis dead, suffered a heart attack and was denied medical care until the next morning. The suffragists dubbed their treatment Nov. 14, 1917, as the “Night of Terror,” and it helped galvanize public support of the suffrage movement.
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At Occoquan, rats ran in and out of the unlit cells. The prisoners held contests to count the number of maggots in their food. And the prison denied the women a most basic human dignity – their privacy. “In the morning we were taken one by one to a washroom at the end of the hall,” Day recalled in her memoir, “The Long Loneliness.” “There was a toilet in each cell, open, and paper and flushing were supplied by the guard. It was as though one were in a zoo with the open bars leading into the corridor.” Prison officials denied the protesters counsel. Many began hunger strikes. And Occoquan superintendent W.H. Whittaker, who had ordered the beatings, called for Marines to guard the compound.
The first woman Marine: In 1918, she couldn’t vote but rushed to serve
From the beginning of Woodrow Wilson’s second term, National Woman’s Party members, known as the Silent Sentinels in distinctive purple, white and gold sashes, surrounded the White House in wordless protest. Their banners attempted to prick the president’s conscience, often charging him with hypocrisy. One banner read, “Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 20,000,000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye.” By 1916, only nine states had given women the right to vote. For the National Woman’s Party, led by Alice Paul, the progress on suffrage was too slow. They demanded a constitutional amendment to make the vote a national right. Wilson, a Democrat, supported women’s suffrage at the state level, but opposed a national amendment. “What was militant about the NWP was that no group had ever picketed the White House before,” said Jennifer Krafchik, executive director of the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, the party’s former headquarters that now serves as its museum. “They used Wilson’s words against him in their banners. Nobody had ever seen this before especially in a group of women. They were much more aggressive than any other suffragette group.”
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“The NWP was not going to stop protesting simply because we were at war. They held Woodrow Wilson up as a pinnacle of democracy abroad but not at home,” Krafchik said. “By June, crowds were getting incensed at what they saw as unpatriotic actions by these women.” The police warned the women that they would be arrested if they continued. Nevertheless, they persisted. The first arrests were in June – three-day sentences, mostly for “obstructing the sidewalk.” The judges fined the picketers $25, which they refused to pay. After serving the three days, the women returned to their sites in front of the White House. But the women arrested in August were sentenced to 60 days – at Occoquan. By November, several picketers had been arrested multiple times, and Whittaker had lost patience. The suffragists demanded to be considered political prisoners, a distinction that could possibly mean better treatment at the D.C. Jail instead of Occoquan.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/
The Night of Terror: When Suffragists Were Imprisoned and Tortured in 1917
After peacefully demonstrating in front of the White House, 33 women endured a night of brutal beatings.
Dorothy Day was described by her fellow suffragists as a “frail girl.” Yet on the night of November 14, 1917, prison guards at the Occoquan Workhouse, did not hold back after she and 32 other women had been arrested several days earlier for picketing outside the White House. “The two men handling her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench—twice,” recalled 73-year-old Mary Nolan, the oldest of the prisoners, in an account published by Doris Stevens. As members of the National Woman’s Party, the women and their fellow “Silent Sentinels” had been peacefully demonstrating in the nation’s capital for months, holding banners and placards calling on President Woodrow Wilson to back a federal amendment that would give all U.S. women the right to vote. Now, these 33 women would endure the most harrowing night in the long history of the suffrage movement. “Never was there a sentence like ours for an offense such as ours, even in England,” Nolan wrote.
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In 1913, frustrated by the lack of progress toward a federal women’s suffrage amendment, some younger members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) decided to step up their efforts. Led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, they organized a suffrage parade held in Washington, D.C. on March 3, the day before Wilson’s inauguration as president. Police stood by when spectators attacked the demonstrators as they made their way down Pennsylvania Avenue, and army cavalry troops eventually had to be dispatched to restore order. Some 100 women were hospitalized with injuries. Later that year, Paul, Burns and their supporters split from NAWSA to form the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage, later renamed the National Woman’s Party (NWP). Both women had been involved with Emmeline Pankhurst’s militant suffrage movement in England, which used tactics such as smashing windows, heckling politicians and even committing arson. As a Quaker, Paul rejected violence, embracing civil disobedience instead.
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The Night of Terror
Faced with brutal treatment by guards and horrendous living conditions at Occoquan, including worm-ridden food and filthy water and bedding, Paul and others began demanding to be treated as political prisoners. After going on a hunger strike, Paul was repeatedly force-fed and transferred in early November to the District Jail’s psychiatric ward. The 33 women brought to Occoquan on the night of November 14 also demanded to be treated as political prisoners. Instead, prison superintendent William H. Whittaker called on his guards to teach the women a lesson. Bursting into the room where the women were waiting to be booked, the guards dragged them down the hall and threw them into dark, filthy cells. Burns had her hands shackled to the top of a cell, forcing her to stand all night; the guards also threatened her with a straitjacket and a buckle gag. Day (the future founder of the Catholic Worker Movement) was slammed her down on the arm of an iron bench twice. Dora Lewis lost consciousness after her head was smashed into an iron bed; Alice Cosu, seeing Lewis’ assault, suffered a heart attack, and didn’t get medical attention until the following morning.
In aftermath of the attack, many of the women began hunger strikes, as Whittaker denied them counsel and summoned U.S. Marines to guard the workhouse. But news of their mistreatment reached the suffragists outside Occoquan, as well as well-placed allies like Dudley Field Malone, an attorney who resigned his post in the Wilson administration in solidarity with the suffragists (he later married Doris Stevens)
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https://www.history.com/news/night-terror-brutality-suffragists-19th-amendment
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