Existing comment:
From June to December 1917 members of the National Woman's Party were imprisoned for picketing the White House to publicize the struggle to win the vote for women. Those incarcerated in the District of Columbia's workhouse in Occoquan, Virginia suffered horrible conditions and mistreatment, including being given rancid, insect-laden food: to protest some went on hunger strikes and were brutally force-fed. The 72-year campaign for women's suffrage ended in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
These concrete steps are the only two architectural elements remaining from the demolished women's workhouse. |