Celebrate "Iron Jawed Angels" 100 Years of Women's Vote: 1920 to 2020
Pondering the Perspectives of The People. . .
26 August, ~ Celebrate Women's Equality Day. In 1920, the final state needed to pass the Woman's Right to Vote Act happened in the state house of Tennessee on August 18th, The ratification papers for the 19th Amendment were carried on a train taking several days to arrive in Washington, DC. Read the story to find out how the presidential appointee was able to exclude the women who were so important in its passage. His arrogance seems reminiscent of today... Without much fanfare, in this official's quiet office, it was signed into law on August 26. This exclusion by this male appointee who had little to do with this momentuous occasion was another slap in the faces of the women who fought for the right to vote. All the more reason to take the whole month to celebrate this important right. The sad part of this story is that the struggle for black women to vote continued up and into the 1960's with the Equal Rights Voting Act.
"In 1971, U.S. Representative Bella Abzug championed a bill in the U.S. Congress to designate August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.” The bill says that “the President is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation annually in commemoration of that day in 1920, on which the women of America were first given the right to vote.” I believe she wanted to make sure that this date did not pass unnoticed. Read the rest of the story at the Constitution Center. It's where I got the quote about Ms. Abzug: Why is August 26th known as Women's Equality Day?
First, We Asked Nicely.
The following story, or message, is brought to you from our archives, our past emails. Many other stories are destined to surface from that source. As things happen, it was while looking for something else that I stumbled upon the following story. Alas, I don't know who wrote it, but if you did, please speak up! Write me. I'll put your byline here, or remove the story, as you wish. I think it may be from a press release as I receive things from various news sources. Back then, there was no Facebook, so it was probably an email forwarded to me. An HBO press release, most likely promoting their new movie Iron Jawed Angels, the timing is right as to when I received this note, the movie would have been just coming out. Plus, the message asks to be passed on, without a credit line, that's how most press releases are sent to the press... So, during this year of the 100th anniversary, let us ponder what brutality these women experienced to gain us the right to vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? ... Our vote doesn't matter? ... It's raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder. All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend said... "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."
HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women 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.
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. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
Please pass this (message) on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women.
No Results Being Nice. So, We Got A Little Tougher.
Collected and presented by editor, Bridget E. Smith, Historical Gazette Data Archives
We thank those Iron Jawed Angels who worked so long and fought so hard to make sure we were not ignored any longer ~ they stopped asking for the right to vote, and demanded it.
Two well known groups from the early suffragist days can still be joined today.
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, aka WILPF and the League of Women Voters
The Equal Rights Amendment
The Struggle for Suffrage Continues
January 2020 -- Virginia state legislature ratifies the amendment. They would be the last one if the other states had not recanted and reversed their decision. It's quite complicated due, mostly, to the passage of time. The question that comes to my mind is: "Who would feel so harshly toward women that they would want to deny women these rights? Men get these rights, why shouldn't women?" It's akin to racism, in that a certain superiority comes into play and it is a private conviction, somewhere, that they are chosen to be above others. I don't know how they can get okay with that, but I find it present in humans. I also find myself disappointed in these same humans. What does it mean that Virginia has ratified the ERA?
Here's a couple of news sources that may answer that question.
Harpers Bazaar and, one of my favorites Wikipedia
from The Columbian Vancouver, Washington newspaper, August 11, 2014
Read more about it:
Equal Rights AmendmentCollected and presented by editor, Bridget E. Smith, Historical Gazette Data Archives
Publications | Ponderings
When injustice begins to rule, it's time to pick up the pen to work for Justice for All.
© 2017-
About Us | Queries
Press Room
