Existing comment:
"The young are at the gates."
In January 1917, with their tricolor banners swinging in the wind, National Woman's Party (NWP) members marched to the White House gates, the first protest group ever to the do so. Eventually, more than two thousand women from thirty states joined them. In June, after the United States entered World War I, attacks on the women began. Crowds, who had quietly observed for months, suddenly viewed picketing as unwomanly, and more importantly, unpatriotic. Over the next two years, approximately 500 women were arrested and charged with obstructing traffic: 168 served prison sentences from three days to six months in the District jail or the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. While in prison, the suffragists endured horrid conditions and brutal treatment. In protest, they went on hunger strikes and endured violent force-feeding by order of prison officials. The NWP used these experiences in prison to generate enormous public pressure on President Wilson and Congress to take action on the federal suffrage amendment. |