How Women Got the Right to Vote

[rivers_bend]

This was forwarded to me with no information about the original poster, but I think it's an important message.

eta thank you to diachrony who found that it was -Connie Schultz, The Plain Dealer, 1801 Superior Ave.,Cleveland, OH 44114, Cschultz@plaind.com, August 2004 who originally posted this. here


How Women Got To Vote: A short history lesson on the privilege of voting


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
Wilso n'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 Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO
movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry.
She was--with herself. '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 Bunko
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 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.



There is no passion to be found in playing small - in settling for a life
that is less than the one you are capable of living. ~Nelson Mandela

Comments

[delicatelight.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen that movie? It's really good, but boy, it's hard to watch at parts.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

i hadn't even heard of it. But I've added it to my netflix queue. I'll bump it up when I'm not premenstrual and already wanting to go on a killing spree.

[delicatelight.livejournal.com]

It's definitely worth watching. Even my die hard hatred of Hilary Swank didn't make me dislike the movie. But yeah, you probably don't want to be hormonal while watching.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that about hilary. Because I don't exactly have a lot of love for her in movies.

[delicatelight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she wasn't too bad. Normally I cringe when she's on screen, but I was okay through it.

[ennui-blue-lite.livejournal.com]

I did not see the movie. But this post has certainly renewed my drive to go out and vote. I voted in the primaries for the first time in my life this year, and I'll proudly vote in the election.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

I've voted way more often than not in my life, but it was good to be reminded how voting is sometimes more important than what/who you're voting for, I thought.

*hugs*

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

When all your political parties and politicians are exactly as bad as each other this stuff seems to matter less.

[aelfsiden.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of the movie but I'm going to try to find it. Thanks for posting this.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

me either. and I discovered reading this that I actually know a lot more about the suffragette movement in the UK than I do here. I need to do something about that, and this movie seems as good a place to start as any. and you're welcome!

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

totally. It's so easy to forget what people went through to get us here.

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

I am a feminist and a history buff. I ALWAYS vote.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

Even the 15 years I lived in England, there were only a few times I didn't get my absentee ballot done and back in time, and I always felt awful.

[runedgirl.livejournal.com]

'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.' What a quote that is, and how quickly we forget. Thanks for the reminder. :)
Hugs,
Lyns

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

That quote is amazing. And works on a frightening number of levels really.

*hugs you*

[kelly-girl.livejournal.com]

*Claps* Thanks for the heads up about the film. I'll link this in my LJ. I remember having to read a book about people traveling to the South in the Sixties to help register Black People to vote.

All the tricks and assaults and even Death. As a Black person, a black woman I want to honor those that gave so much so I could vote.

It's hard sometimes to remember what people before us sacrificed because we get caught up in the here and now.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

It's just shocking to me what people had to go through to get basic rights over the years. And what people are continuing to go through now. Sometimes it seems so simple that we are able to vote, and it's really not. *hugs*

[diachrony.livejournal.com]

I googled, and found:

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage1900/a/suffrage_brutal.htm

http://www.fwhc.org/why-women-vote.htm (credits the original author)

The author of the article in the email you quote is Connie Schultz of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland, and apparently - and unfortunately - the story is true.

It's horrifically depressing lately reading about so much institutionalized & handwaved-away abuse of women & children (I've been reading memoirs of women who escaped the FLDS cult, and it doesn't sound too different from that email.)

If only so many people didn't seem to have their heads firmly in the sand. Sigh.

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the research! I was clearly too lazy. But I've edited the post *g*

It is depressing. I can't help but hope that things will change for the better though. They just have to.

[victorian-tweed.livejournal.com]

RIGHT ON!!!!

(Ooooh...don't get me started on anyone who takes their right to vote for granted!)

May I take this and post it in my LJ?

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

of course you may, my love!

[victorian-tweed.livejournal.com]

:-) Thank you.

[lila-blue-b.livejournal.com]

Iron Jawed Angels is an awesome movie! I do highly recommend it if you haven't seen it. It's on my list of movies that every American (if not everyone in general) needs to see, along with Walker (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096409/).

I was watching Little Women earlier today too, and a scene reminded me of Iron Jawed Angels and this reminds me of it... Jo says to a group of young men who are discussing why or why not women should be allowed to vote, "I find it poor logic to say that because women are good, women should vote. Men do not vote because they are good. They vote because they are male. And women should vote not because they are angels and men are animals, but because we are human beings and citizens of this country." LUV EET!!! What I do not love is that it took fighting for another 61 years after Louisa Mae Alcott published Little Women, culminating in the suffering of the women portrayed in Iron Jawed Angels, for women to gain suffrage in the US, not even 100 years ago yet.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

hi, first of all thanks for this post -- it's horrifying but a necessary reminder -- thanks!

then I wanted to bring up something about the attribution of the quotation you close with.

"There is no passion to be found in playing small - in settling for a life
that is less than the one you are capable of living." ~Nelson Mandela

There's a writer named Marianne Williamson who is the source of a longer but very similar quote. I get the impression perhaps Mandela is referring to her work? but in googling I can't locate the source of his quotation (it's not his 1994 inaugural tho). Anyways, just in the interest of giving women their due, I thought I'd quote this here for you -- hope it's not too spammy ---

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” From Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love, 1992.

Cheers!