Women's Suffragist-a Non-Violent Protest

Women's Suffrage- Non-Violent Protest During the time when Woodrow Wilson was President there were many events that took place that change the world. Including, World War I and also the Woman Suffrage movement. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns are some of the young Suffragist activists of who played a major role in changing history. Paul and Burns were very rebellious women who wanted a constitutional amendment for women to have the right to vote. Both of these women would go through great lengths until this amendment was passed. The NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association) wanted Alice Paul to run their committee in Washington D.C. but they were advised to raise their own money. Their first event was a parade to promote woman suffrage. The parade led to a riot and the suffragists got exactly what they wanted; exposure. They were on the front page of the newspaper letting people know what they are about. After this event Alice Paul meets a political cartoonist named Ben Weissman. This, leads to Burns and Paul leaving NAWSA to form their own organization called the National Woman's Party (NWP). The NWP opposes any candidate against the proposed constitutional amendment. The NWP decided to protest and picket the White House in 1917. During these pickets the women were arrested for their actions and were imprisoned on charges of obstructing traffic, they were sentenced to prison for up to six months. Paul and Burns did not like this idea so they started to go on a hunger strike. The women of NWP used this hunger strike to secure public sympathy and move the government to act on woman suffrage. Paul was placed in a psychopathic ward and was forced-fed. Paul did not want other members of NWP to go on a hunger strike but she only wanted to take sacrifice on herself. On November 14, thirty-three NWP women suffered Raymond Whittaker's infamous "night of terror". The terror began immediately when two soldiers attacked picketers. Burns was singled out for especially rough treatment during her time at Occoquan Workhouse. When she resisted being taken away, she was beaten and then eventually had her wrists handcuffed high on her cell door. Nobody treated Burns for her injuries or anyone else's injuries; they were not even allowed to use the toilet. Feeding was done with tubing, forced down the mouth or nostrils, and the suffragists faced it but with dread. Rose Winslow experienced forcible feeding during her imprisonment, she smuggled out notes saying: "I had a nervous time of it, gasping a long time after ward, and my stomach rejecting during the process…the poor soul who fed me got liberally besprinkled during the process. I heard myself making the most hideous sounds…one feels so forsaken when one lies prone and people shove a pipe down one's stomach…yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting continually during the process. The tube had developed an irritation somewhere that is painful…the same doctor feds both Alice Paul and me. Don't let them tell you we take this well…we think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible." (Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, 246–7)
But, on November 23, judge Edmund Waddil decided the suffragists had been illegally committed to Occoquan, and should be sent to the District Jail; all were released on November 27 and 28. The violence of that night on November 14, 1917 was all done for a cause which the NWP took very seriously. In March of 1918, the federal court appeals decided that the women arrested in 1917 had been tried and imprisoned under no existing law (Alice Paul and the Triumph of Militancy) the suffragists had been arrested for obstructing traffic which is a misdemeanor but their sentences were far from appropriate punishment. The NWP was designed to reach the public through the media which depended on public support, sympathy, and outrage. But, in 1917 socialist women joined the NWP in hope to demonstrate against the Wilson government. In January of 1918 President Wilson finally endorsed woman suffrage by federal action and the house passed the suffrage amendment. But by the fall of 1918, the senate had not yet passed the amendment, lacking on vote. Until victory was finally achieved the NWP moved from one action to another, continually keeping pressure on authorizes. In May of 1919, the House passed the amendment again, and in June, Wilson secured the last senate vote for passage. Finally, Tennessee reaffirmed its vote for ratification, and the Nineteenth amendment was officially added to the United States Constitution on August 26, 1920. This led to the fight for the equal rights amendment. Which was headed by the NWP and first introduced in Congress only three years after ratification of the Nineteenth amendment? Alice Paul and Lucy Burns are among many women who put their lives at risk for the right to vote. Without the persistence of the NWP woman still might not have been able to vote at this present time.