Friday, September 12, 2008

Women and the Vote

Wonder Woman sent this to me a couple weeks ago and it has been on my mind.  So much that I am going to use Susan B. Anthony and the suffragette movement in a paper this semester.

This has information in it that I did not know.  Read it, maybe it will be inspiring to you too.


WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers--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.

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.'

(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.

(Dora Lewis)
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 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.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

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?

HBO's movie 'Iron Jawed Angels' 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.

'What would those women think of the way we use, or don't use, our right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women.'

HBO released the movie 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 Bunco 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, if you are so inclined, 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. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

History is being made.

Voting is a privilege,
Normal Girl


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would like to think the struggle is over, the race has been won. But reality is that it continues even today.

GBG
gerberBAbygraMA

Kim said...

My friend Weasel is driving women to the polls on voting day. All of us need to do something similar. At the very least we should be talking about it to all the women we know. If every woman voted, it would make a big difference.

Anonymous said...

Alice Paul was a totally gutsy broad! Because she knew she would be arrested for protesting, she chose the quiet hunger strike. I'd like to think I could do the same thing. Maybe back then pre-french fries and pizza!