How To Participate In The Women's Suffrage Movement

Women used many methods including parades, picketing and hunger strikes to gain the right to vote in the Women's Suffrage Movement. One tactic women used to gain suffrage was hosting a parade on the day of President Wilson’s inauguration. The parade was meant bring awareness and to gain support for women's suffrage. The women needed support from the people who can vote, if they were to have any hope of getting an amendment assuring women the right to vote. Women suffragists made floats and banners, dressed up in graduation robes and marched down the street with women waving flags and holding signs. Though the parade did not go as planned, the men at the parade started to insult and hurt the women, they still gained publicity and some support
for their cause. The parade was in everyone’s gossip because it got on the front page of the newspaper since the police didn't stop the men from insulting and hurting the women. A positive impact of this publicity was that the women got to meet the President.
A second method the women used to gain suffrage was that they stood outside of the White House gates and held flags and banner with messages asking about liberty and how long they would have to wait for freedom. Alice Paul even read parts of President Wilson’s speeches about democracy for everyone and then burned them saying that they actually meant nothing if women didn’t have voting rights here in the United States. The suffragists were bringing attention to why they should have the right to vote and how if the President thinks everyone in Germany should have democracy then everyone in the U.S. should be included in government as well. A third tactic used to gain suffrage was going on hunger strike to gain sympathy from the citizens so they would support women’s suffrage. When Miss Paul stopped eating the President sent a doctor in to try and prove she was insane for being suicidal and for threatening the president. Alice Paul outsmarted the doctor by saying she was not protesting the President, but the position and was not suicidal for starving herself but was just willing to die for her cause. Not being able to declare her insane the prison decided to force feed her. As a result, Paul wrote a note to the other women telling of how they forced a tube down her throat and poured food down the tube to her
stomach. Mrs. Leighton the Senator's wife had just received the note from Paul when her husband requested to see her. Mrs. Leighton gave her husband the note and when he realized the treatment of the women and his wife in prison, he published the note in the papers. President Wilson was publicly embarrassed by the news and had no other choice but to give the women what the wanted, suffrage. In the end the women’s use of many different tactics such as parades, picketing and hunger strikes paid off because on August 18th, 1920 the 19th amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote.