"COURAGE IN WOMEN IS OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR INSANITY"

Today, as some politicians would like to take away VOTING RIGHTS, it is good to reflect about how far we have come and that we never want to go back.  LEST WE FORGET, remember that it was not until 1920 that women WON (I hate it when the words "given" and "granted" are used) the RIGHT TO VOTE!  Voter registration is an ongoing passion for me.

This is a story of OUR great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and mothers who lived only 95 years ago.  On November 15, 1917, women dared to "peaceably assemble" and to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.





The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless.  Thus unfolded "The Night Of Terror" when the Warden of Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there.  By the end of the night, some were barely alive.  Forty prison guards, with their warden's blessing, went on a rampage, wielding clubs against the thirty three women for the offense of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

Here are some of our heroines:

LUCY BURNS was beaten with her hands chained to the cell bars above her head and was left hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.



DORA LEWIS was hurled into a dark cell, had her head smashed against an iron bed and was knocked out cold.  Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought that Lewis was dead and Cosu suffered a heart attack.  Additional affidavits describe the guards beating, grabbing, dragging, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting, and kicking the women.



ALICE PAUL, the leader, embarked on a hunger strike.  She was bound to a chair, had a tube forced down her throat, and had liquid poured down her throat until she vomited.  She was tortured like this for weeks until word was finally smuggled out and there was a public outcry.



PAULINE ADAMS in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.



For weeks the only water the women received was from an open pail and the food they received was infested with worms.


EDITH AINGE of Jamestown, New York


Every one of us should rent the movie Iron Jawed Angels.  It is a graphic depiction of the battle these valiant women waged to enable us to go to our polling places, pull the curtain, and have our say!  Let's not them have worked and died in vain!  HBO has released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies, and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum.  I wish it were shown at political events and anywhere else women--and like minded men-- gather.  I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

Suffragists conferring over ratification of the 19th Amendment:


Suffragists at the National Woman's Party Headquarters, Jackson Place, Washington D.C., conferring over ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis,  Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right).

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized but it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong and brave, he said, and that didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.".

We need to get out to vote, register others to vote, and encourage others to vote to use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. 

HELENA HILL WEED, of Norwalk, Connecticut, while serving a 3-day sentence in a Washington D.C. prison for carrying a banner which read "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.".


WHAT are the reasons for NOT voting:  I have to work;   I have to carpool;   it's raining;  I don't want to be called for jury duty;   I don't know where to go to vote;  I don't know when it is;  my vote doesn't matter--yes, I've heard ALL those excuses!

As my mother used to say, "Any excuse is better than none!"