Read on and show your grandma some respect...
As Woodrow Wilson took office in January 1917, demonstrators took up positions outside the White House, holding round-the-clock vigils demanding the vote for women. In spite of the on-going world war, they refused to step aside or muffle their demands.
Instead, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and other members of the National Woman's Party aimed to humiliate the president and expose the hypocrisy of "making the world safe for democracy" when there was none at home. Their banners said, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty." They hung Wilson in effigy and burned copies of his speeches.
Arrests began in June. "Obstructing traffic" was the usual charge, but many prison officials--as well as citizens--considered the suffragists traitors. In the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, they ate rancid food; were denied medical care and refused visitors. The demonstrators applied for political prisoner status. It was denied.
But the government's tactic didn't work. On release from prison, women returned to the White House gates. Their ranks swelled. By November, there were more marches and more arrests. An investigation had been launched into conditions at Occoquan and the activities of its superintendent, W.H. Whittaker, whose special cruelty was well known.
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.
The women were 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 33 women 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.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--gruel--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.
It is jarring to know Woodrow Wilson and his cronies tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare suffragist leader Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized and taken out of the spotlight of the battle for women's right to vote. And it is inspiring to know the doctor refused. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men saying:
"Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
More Info here.
Instead, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and other members of the National Woman's Party aimed to humiliate the president and expose the hypocrisy of "making the world safe for democracy" when there was none at home. Their banners said, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty." They hung Wilson in effigy and burned copies of his speeches.
Arrests began in June. "Obstructing traffic" was the usual charge, but many prison officials--as well as citizens--considered the suffragists traitors. In the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, they ate rancid food; were denied medical care and refused visitors. The demonstrators applied for political prisoner status. It was denied.
But the government's tactic didn't work. On release from prison, women returned to the White House gates. Their ranks swelled. By November, there were more marches and more arrests. An investigation had been launched into conditions at Occoquan and the activities of its superintendent, W.H. Whittaker, whose special cruelty was well known.
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.
The women were 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 33 women 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.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--gruel--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.
It is jarring to know Woodrow Wilson and his cronies tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare suffragist leader Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized and taken out of the spotlight of the battle for women's right to vote. And it is inspiring to know the doctor refused. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men saying:
"Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
More Info here.
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