Karen+Parker+Handout.Pdf

1 Background 1837 Charles Fourier (French), a utopian socialist, coined In November 1917, 33 women were arrested for the the word féminisme. He felt the level of development in any “crime” of carrying banners reading, “Mr. President, what civilization could be determined by how liberated its women will you do for woman’s suffrage?” After also asking to be were. treated as political prisoners, superintendent William H. Whittaker ordered the nearly 40 male guards to “teach the 1st Wave Feminism women a lesson.” Guards entered the holding cell where The first convention in America regarding women’s rights the women awaited booking, beating the 33 women of all began with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. ages with clubs, and then dragged them into individual cells where the mistreatment continued. In America, feminism, woman’s suffrage, and the rights of other oppressed minorities have been intertwined since their Affidavits from an investigation reveal that the women inception. Many of the activists at Seneca Falls had become were dragged, choked, pinched, and kicked. Guards twisted politically aware and engaged due to the American abolitionist Dora Lewis’ arm behind her back and slammed her into a movement. And feminists were likewise engaged with socialist iron bed twice; leaving her unconscious on the floor. Her movements because of Socialism’s support of suffrage. cellmate, Alice Cosu, believing Lewis was dead, suffered a heart attack. She was denied medical treatment until the Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, members of the National next morning. Dorothy Day, who later co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), felt the Catholic Worker Movement, was slammed repeatedly over organization was too moderate and progress too slow. the back of an iron bench. In response, Paul and Burns organized a D. C. suffrage parade the day before Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 presidential When Lucy Burns refused the guard’s orders to stop a inauguration. Bystanders attacked the parade, the police roll call to check on the other women, they stripped her did nothing, and finally cavalry troops were sent to restore naked, handcuffed her arms to the cell bars above her order. Around 100 women were hospitalized with injuries head, and left her standing and bleeding, all night. They also sustained in the attacks. threatened her with a gag and straightjacket. In solidarity, other women stood holding their arms above their own Later that year, Paul, Burns and their supporters broke heads until she was released. from the NAWSA and formed what was to become the National Woman’s Party (NWP). Alice Paul, a member After the Night of Terror, the women went on a hunger of the Quaker religion and a socialist, accepted the more strike. As it continued, Whittaker began to consider the aggressive tactics of her English suffragette counterparts, negative publicity of white, upper and middle-class women while rejecting the violent ones; deciding instead that their dying on his watch, so he ordered Burns be removed to movement would focus on civil disobedience. (1) another jail. Here she was held down by five people as a tube was forced through her nostril in order to force One action was to peacefully demonstrate as “Silent feed her, a practice which caused Burns painful, severe Sentinels” in front of the White House. Standing silently, nosebleeds. Burns ultimately served more jail time than any holding banners and placards that called on President other American suffragist. Woodrow Wilson to back a federal amendment giving all U.S. women the right to vote. This is where our image narrative begins. On the left of the image, we are witnessing the release of some of As the country moved into the 1st World War, the the 33 women who had been arrested weeks earlier for suffragists began to be viewed as unpatriotic. Wilson even picketing outside the White House. writes to his daughter that the suffragists “seem bent on making their cause as obnoxious as possible.” (2) As other suffragists learned of the abuse through letters and lawyers, they spread the word. When the media began In 1917, a few months after the silent protests start, the reporting on the Night of Terror, it shocked the nation and protestors and the judicial system become locked in a battle brought attention and support to their cause. This moved of wills. The women, determined to keep protesting. The Congress to take up legislation. But as with many “radical” courts and the police, determined to stop them by arresting ideas, some legislators were reluctant to pass the bill. them on smaller and smaller infractions and enforcing longer and longer sentences. “This was something that respectable To show their anger toward Wilson for not using his white women didn’t usually do.” (3) influence to push Congress into action, the NWP began burning “watchfires of freedom” in January 1919. They Alice Paul was finally sentenced to 7 months in Occoquan torched copies of the president’s speeches, incinerated a Workhouse; where she and other suffragists were subject to paper effigy of him, and ceremoniously burned wood from brutal treatment by the prison guards, vermin infested food, Revolutionary-era sites. Arrests and imprisonments followed. dirty drinking water, rats in the cells, and filthy beds. Paul But the women’s persistence finally led to congressional and the other women, working from the British suffragette approval of the 19th Amendment in June 1919 and ratification model, demanded to be treated as political prisoners; with 14 months later by three-fourths of the states. Paul finally going on a hunger strike. She was subsequently force fed and transferred to a psychiatric facility. 2 Detail showing: Image Timeline & Legend g Detail showing: a, b, c, d, e (i) Bessie Coleman was an early American airplane pilot. She was the first woman of African-American descent, and also the first of Native-American descent, to hold a pilot’s license. She earned her (a) 1917 − Alice Paul leaving Occoquan, is greeted by 4 pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 1921 prominent suffragists from North Carolina. From left to right: and was the first black person to earn an international pilot’s license. (b) Dr. Anna Julia Cooper: Educator. Her most famous speech (j) Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor at the World’s Congress of Representative Women in Chicago of Arts degree. She supported the NWP, was a member of the in May 1898, described the plight of African American women in Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, slavery and their progress since that point. and she campaigned for labor rights, socialism, antimilitarism, among other causes. (c) Dr. Mary Cowper: Used social sciences to further Progressive reforms, focused on social, economic, and political status of women 1923 – The first version of an Equal Rights Amendment, and working-class children by encouraging women’s suffrage. authored by Alice Paul, is introduced to Congress by Senator Curtis and Representative Anthony (nephew of Susan B Anthony), (d) Gertrude Weil formed North Carolina Equal Suffrage League both Republicans. It says, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its : author, educator, and (e) Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown jurisdiction. Envoys from across America formed and traveled to founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina. Washington in order to deliver their message to President Coolidge. Detail showing: (k) Georgia O’Keeffe: “I have always resented being told that there f, h, i, j, k, l, p are things I cannot do because I am a woman,” she told a National Woman’s Party audience in 1926. (l) Ella May Wiggins: In September 1929 the North Carolina union organizer and balladeer was ambushed and killed by anti- union “mill thugs” during the Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia, N.C. Earlier that year, she traveled with a group of textile workers to Washington, D.C., to testify to the Senate about labor practices in the South, where she told her story: “I’m the mother of nine. Four died with the whooping cough, all at once. I was working nights, I asked the super to put me on days, so’s I could tend ‘em when they had their bad spells. But he wouldn’t. I don’t know why. ... So I had to quit, and then there wasn’t no money for medicine, and they just died.” She pushed for racially integrated unions, worked in a racially integrated mill and wrote folk ballads, including her best known (f) 1918 – The “Spanish Flu” pandemic. H1N1 virus A song: Mill Mother’s Lament. variant killed between 20 and 50 million people. Lasting from (m) Southern Tenant Farmers Union (1934–1970): A February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people – about union for organizing tenant farmers in the Southern United States. a third of the world’s population at the time – in four successive Founded in July 1934 during the Great Depression, the STFU was waves. Issues of masking, public gatherings and how to control founded to help sharecroppers and tenant farmers get better transmission are being played out exactly in 2020. arrangements from landowners. The organization was integrated Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, founded in New and women were the backbone; doing most of the networking, York in 1909. organizing, and outreach. (g) 1919 – Watchfires of Freedom, began January 1919. (n) Amelia Earhart was the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic. She organized a protest in Washington D.C. on behalf of 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is Helen Richey, the first female commercial airline pilot, who quit her ratified, ensuring the right of women to vote.

Load more