Woman Suffrage "Iron Jawed Angels"

The post below are not my own words they came from an email sent to me by my mother for this up-coming election week.  While in college at the University of California, Davis, while working on my degree in Sociology I had many great professors lecture on woman suffrage and this part of our history. 

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1865-1925) served as President of the United States (1913-1921).  He was a Democrat.  He graduated from the College of New Jersey which is today Princeton.  He died three years after leaving the White House.  Why am I explaining all of this?  No, I have not recently linked our family to this president, however I am close to linking to Lincoln so stay tuned on that.  I find it interesting that history shows we have not come that far.   The Democrat party and the media is creating witch hysteria over Republican candidate for the special 2010 Delaware election for Senate, Christine O' Donnell.  Politicians losing sight that they represent everyone in their district.  

So my word here today is to urge everyone to get out and vote for some politician they feel represents the people, all the people!
 
A TRUE STORY EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW!

This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago. 

 

 

 Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

 The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

 (Lucy Burns)They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.


 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.'

 (Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, 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.

 (Alice Paul)
 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. 

  
  Mrs Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a 60 day sentence. 

 
Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York  

 

  (Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

 
 Conferring over ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at  National Woman's Party headquarters, Jackson Place , Washington , D.C. 

 Left to right: Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer,  Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel,  Mabel Vernon (standing, right)) 

In the current HBO movie "Iron Jawed Angels" 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.'

 
  Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn.   Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.'