Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful day!

Kate Heffelfinger

One hundred and two years ago, Silent Sentinel Kate Heffelfinger was released from the Occocquan Workhouse.  It was Kate's 28th birthday.

Like many of the prisoners who had partaken in the hunger strike and then forcibly fed, Kate was so weak that she had to be assisted to the automobile.

Despite the ordeal, she continued to picket and was an active member of the National Woman's Party from 1917-1919.  After the 19th Amendment was passed she ran for State Representative in 1920; she did not win that race.

Kate Heffelefinter (1889-1958)

Born in Shamokin Pennslyvania, Kate wrote for the NWP, and organized suffrage support in Pennsylvania and other states.  

Kate never married and developed health problems as the years passed.  After her mother's death in 1940, Kate's mental health began to deteriorate as well.  It is quite likely that she suffered PTSD and the trauma of losing her mother triggered her psychological problems afterwards.  I ran this theory by my friend Chris who is a Psychologist and he said her story suggested that as well.  Kate passed away in the Danville Mental Hospital in 1958.

Happy Birthday Kate Heffelfinger.  You are not forgotten.

Happy Birthday Mary H. Ingham!

Mary H. Ingham (1866-1937)

By 1917, there were two rivaling suffrage groups--the more conservative NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association) and the more militant NWP (National Woman's Party).  Mary Hall Ingham was a leader for Pennsylvania's branch of the NWP.

A Bryn Mawr graduate, she was a supporter of suffrage, had campaigned for Teddy Roosevelt in 1912,  and assisted labor movements. 

As a Silent Sentinel, she was arrested three times for picketing.  In 1917, after her first release from prison, she raised $8,000 (roughly equal to $150,000 today) by speaking to people from her home.

Mary led the charge to insure Pennsylvania ratification for the 19th Amendment.  This was no easy feat as the the 1915 campaign had proved.  On June 24, 1919, the Pennsylvania legislature voted to ratify the amendment.

Mary is included in my quilt that honors Pennsylvania Silent Sentinels.

Would you like to learn about the Silent Sentinels that were arrested from your state or incorporate them in your quilt challenge?  

An easy resource for you is an excerpt from Jailed For Freedom.  The book lists the women arrested, their backgrounds, and where they lived.    I found the book online for you.  The link is here.

Poem: "Votes for Women"

This poem would have made a great vaudeville skit!

“Votes for Women”

“Wha’s all that noise?” The captain asked

The mate stood by, a-grinnin;

“It’s female women, sir,” he said,

“They’re shoutin’ ‘Votes for Women.’”

“A curse upon them mate” said he,

And sent his wheel a-spinnin,

“Whoever  heard of such a thing

As givin’ votes to women?”

“Go down there,” he commanded,

“An’ clear the bloomin’ cabin.

We’ll ‘ave no blarsted meeting here,

Or cries of ‘Votes for Women.’”

When mate returned he was a sight,

Skirts covered the underpinnin’,

While on his back he wore a sign:

“We’re After Votes for Women.”

The captain quailed before the gaze

Of fifty angry women,

Then quickly dove into the sea,

Where they say he’s still a-swimmin’

Now the moral is, be not too gay

When “knockin”  “Votes for Women,”

For a woman’s wrath is not a thing

At which you should be grinning.

Suffrage Quilting #2

There is a variation to quilting that we refer to now as a tied quilt; in the past they were often referred to these as comforts or comfortables.  Here is one from my collection:

Around here, women often used pieces of wool or felt to make a fabric button that would inhibit the thread from wearing the quilt down too much.  I don't know if this was done to stabilize quilts in other parts of the country.  The end result is a very heavy and very thick quilt.  

Suffragists didn't just talk about helping society.  They put their money--and often their needles--to achieve the goals.  Here is a touching article  I thought you might appreciate.

The Night of Terror

November 14, 1917: The Night of Terror

“Never would I recover from this wound, this ugly knowledge I had gained of what men were capable in their treatment of each other.  It was one thing to be writing about these things, to have the theoretical knowledge of sweatshops and injustice and hunger, but it was quite another to experience it in one’s own flesh.”  --Dorothy Day, one of the Silent Sentinels brutalized during the Night of Terror.

Nina Allender's illustration from The Suffragist Newspaper,

November 1917

One hundred and two years ago, 33 women were sent to the Occoquan Workhouse.  They had been charged with obstructing traffic but the real crime was that they were protesting peacefully outside The White House.

  Since January, a steady stream of women had been picketing the White House.  At first they were a novelty to Washingtonians, even featured on tourist tours.  

January 1917

But after the United States entered World War 1, the “Silent Sentinels” were perceived as unpatriotic.  They were clearly an embarrassment to Woodrow Wilson.  By summer they were being arrested for  picketing and often sent to Occoquan Workhouse. 

Deprived of their natural rights—including the right to see their lawyer, mail correspondence, or buy anything for themselves in the prison store, the women considered themselves political prisoners.  By November 14, 1917 the press was already speculating about the health of Alice Paul who had been arrested in October and was on a hunger strike with Rose Winslow and who would soon be joined by Kate Heffelfinger.

The women were made to wait in the warden’s office and not immediately processed into their cells.  When the Superintendant Whittaker (the warden) did come in, he brought along a group of thugs who beat and tortured the women; all accounts that I read stated Superintendant Whittaker directed the whole attack.  

All of the women were sent to the men’s prisons where they had no privacy available to them.  But the beatings and the torture were even worse.

Another illustration by Nina Allender

“I saw Dorothy Day brought in.  She is a frail girl.  The two men handling her were twisting her arms above her head.  Then suddenly they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench—twice.  As they ran past me, she was lying there with her arms out, and we heard one of the men yell “The----suffrager!  My mother ain’t no suffrager.  I’ll put you through ----" reported Mrs. Mary Nolan the oldest suffragist of the group at age 73.

Dorothy Day in 1916, she would later co-found the Catholic Worker Movement

Mary Nolan

Once in her room, Mrs. Nolan reported that “Mrs. (Dora) Lewis, doubled over and handled like a sack of something, was literally thrown in.  Her head struck the iron bed.  We thought she was dead.  She didn’t move.”  Alice Cosu who was also in the cell was so upset that she had a heart attack and was denied medical assistance.

Dora Lewis upon her release from prison

Alice Cosu

Lucy Burns, the co-founder of the National Woman’s Party was shackled with her arms above her for calling a roll call to see if all the women were present or if something worse had happened to them.  She was also threatened with a straightjacket and gag.

Lucy Burns

When a male doctor did come to see the women later, the women asked for a female doctor and refused to undress in front of him.  Per Lucy Burn’s notes, they “were dragged through halls by force, our clothing removed by force and we were examined…”

Most of the women went on hunger strikes.  You can read about the Night of Terror all over the internet.  I wanted you to hear first-hand accounts from the book , Jailed For Freedom  written by Doris Stevens and published in 1920.  It’s free to read on google books. 

But here’s the thing—the women never gave in.  And many of them went right back to the picket line once they were released.  The absolute tenacity of these women was commented on by a government doctor at the workhouse:

Thank you Silent Sentinels.

You are not forgotten.

Happy Birthday Elizabteh Cady Stanton!

Happy Birthday Elizabeth Cady Stanton!

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (holding her daughter Harriet)

1815-1902

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the great leaders of the suffrage movement through the 19th century.  An abolitionist, she was one of the five women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

Elizabeth advocated not only for women's suffrage but for women's property rights, custody rights, employment, and temperance.

In 1851 she met Susan B. Anthony and the two became the dynamic duo of suffrage.  Elizabeth often wrote Anthony's speeches, especially after Elizabeth's seven children took up more of her time.  She had a keen intellect and much of her legal knowledge came from being around her father, Judge Daniel Cady, who allowed her to read his law books.

Elizabeth was the first woman to run for Congress in 1866.  She received 24 votes.

She along with Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote a three volume work called History of Women's Suffrage.  

One of her most popular speeches that she gave frequently was called Our Girls.  She gave this speech and variations of it throughout the 1880s.  It has a motherly tone.  Beautifully written, it relayed to young women--and their parents--that women needed an education and the ability to choose their own destiny.  It is notable that both of her daughters finished college and became suffragists  Here is an excerpt; the "they" are girls/young women:  

They have awakened to the fact that they belong to a subject, degraded, ostracized class: that to fulfill their man appointed sphere, they can have no individual character, no life purpose, personal freedom, aim or ambition. They are simply to revolve round some man, to live only for him, in him, with him, to be fed, clothed, housed, guided and controlled by him, to-day by Father or Brother, tomorrow by Husband or Son, no matter how wise or mature, they are never to know the freedom and dignity that one secures in self-dependence and self support. Girls feel all this, though they may never utter it, far more keenly than kind Fathers imagine.

You can read the whole speech here.  

Susan B. Anthony wrote after death, "she forged the lightning bolts" that Anthony fired in her speeches.  Four years later, Susan B. would pass as well.

Ken Burns did a great documentary on the dynamic duo.  It's called "Not for Ourselves Alone:  The story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony" and if you can catch it next year, I suggest you do!

Have a great day!

The League of Women Voters

Today marks the end of our election week special on the blog.

Two groups of suffragists with very different tactics contributed to the passing of the 19th Amendment.  The National Woman's Party (NWP) lobbied for a federal amendment and was headed by Alice Paul.  The other was group was the the National American Woman's Suffrage Association (NAWSA) an older, more established (and conservative in tactics) organization.  Headed by Carrie Chapman Catt, the NAWSA favored a state by state approach to achieve women's right to vote and was the largest group of suffragists in the country.

After suffrage had been established, the groups disbanded but still differed in their approach to women's rights.  In 1923, Alice Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment.  Carrie Chapman Catt had already created her choice to help women, the League of Women Voters.

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947)

The League of Women Voters was established even before the 19th Amendment was passed and came out of the NAWSA.  Founded February 14, 1920 it was meant to create not only assistance to the new voters of this country but had a wider platform similar to the broader goals of suffrage.  These goals included child labor laws, literacy, equal opportunity for women and a minimum wage.  One of the first victories of this group was the passing of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1921 which provided federal support for mothers and children; it was the first federal social security act (it expired in 1929).

One of the questions I always ask when I am studying a part of suffrage history is how did this impact women of color?  

After women participated in their first voting election there were multiple reports on how African American women in the south were not allowed to vote.  My answer was found actually on the League of Women Voters' website.  I appreciate that they did not choose to relay a revisionist perspective of their own history.

Chris Carson and Virginia Kase wrote in 2018:  

Last week, Brent Staples of the New York Times published an op-ed titled, How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women. The League of Women Voters was not mentioned in the piece, but we should have been.

You can read the piece here.

Ellen Martin Day!

Today is Ellen Martin Day!

Ellen Martin (1847-1917)

Some of you are shy about commenting on the blog but I am enjoying your emails and questions.  On Thursday I actually got a letter!  Barb S. wanted to share the story of women voting in her hometown of Lombard, Illinois!  

Lombard, is a suburb outside of Chicago, Illinois and in 1891, Ellen Martin entered the general store where voting was held and demanded that she be allowed to vote.  She became the first woman to vote in Illinois.  

Ellen Martin was born in New York in 1847, attended college in New York and graduated with a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1875;  a year later she was admitted to the bar in Illinois.  She along with Mary F. Perry had a small law firm in Chicago.  The women commuted from Lombard where they rented rooms to work in the city.

Many sources have pointed out the main challenge that women lawyers faced.  Because they did not have full rights to citizenship and could not vote, they could practice some law but were never really recognized as true lawyers.

On April 6, 1891, Ellen marched into the general store and demanded to vote.  According to one newspaper:

Ellen was prepared for the confrontation:

The last sentence of the description below might be my favorite:

After Ellen had voted, she told 14 women from the town she had done so and they too went to cast their ballot.

The women made headlines not only in Illinois but throughout the midwest:

Ellen and "The Ladies of Lombard" ignited change in their society.  By fall, women were granted the right to vote in school elections.  

Additional but still limited voting rights were enacted in 1913.

By 1919, Legislators were set to vote on the 19th Amendment.  They had hoped to be the first state to radify the amendment (a heartening decision) and joined with Wisconsin and Michigan in approving the amendment on June 10, 1919.  One slight problem with the language of the bill meant they had to repeat the vote a week later.  

Ellen A. Martin has been celebrated in Illinois for her courageous actions.  I found two times that she was honored in Congress.  In 2001 and again in 2019,  Senator Dick Durbin recounted the story of Ellen's tenacity and honored the contributions of women.  In 2001, he wrote:

Ellen Martin refused to be held down by the social and political mores of the day.  She had the courage to challenge and conquer the barriers that attempted to restrict her.  And for her efforts, she won a small but important victory.

In Lombard, Illinois,  April 6 is celebrated as Ellen Martin Day!

Thanks Barb for sharing this wonderful story with us!

"I cannot vote, but I can be voted for."

Belva Ann Lockwood (1830-1917)

On Monday, I wrote about Victoria Woodhull running for president; she is part of our story.  There is some debate as to whether or not she was the first woman to run for office or not.  Technically Woodhull could not become president--she didn't meet the constitutional requirement of being 35 years or older to be president or vice-president.  

Enter Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood.  Belva's life story would make a great movie.  She was born in New York state to a farming couple; widowed twice, she entered college as an adult, fought to enter law school and fought again for the right to try cases before the Supreme Court.  This woman was a force to be reckoned with and I think many of us would find her life story inspiring.

There were times that her presence as a woman lawyer offended the trying judge that she was literally removed from the courtroom.

She was the first woman to try a case before the Supreme Court.

She fought for equal franchise for African Americans and fought alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for woman's suffrage.

She fought for Native American rights and won a five million dollar settlement from the federal government in 1906.

She believed in world peace and co-edited The Peacemaker journal.

In 1884 and again in 1888, she ran for President as the candidate for the National Equal Rights Party.  It's been written that she received over 4,000 votes.  She said at the time, "I cannot vote, but I can be voted for."

A great book on all of Belva's accomplishments is Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President by Jill Nogren (with a forword written by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg!).  I think you will enjoy it greatly.

Election Day!

147 years ago today, Susan B. Anthony and a handful of women voted in the presidential election.  Ulysess S. Grant was the incumbent and running against Horace Greeley.  As discussed yesterday, it was the also the year that Victoria Woodhull ran as the candidate for the Equal Rights Party.

The women voted in Rochester, New York; it would be another 48 years until the state of New York would allow women to vote.  Anthony chose to vote for Grant and he readily won the election.

Susan B. Anthony was already a national figure; she is now considered to be one of the greatest orators of the 19th century.  "Aunt Susan" as she was affectionately called by suffragists was not only a great orator but a masterful strategist.  After her arrest, she can began to use the incident to her advantage and distribute posters and letters to locals and politicians.

One of the women arrested with Anthony was her neighbor, Rhoda DeGarma

Ultimately, it was only Susan B. Anthony that would stand trial.  "The Trial of Susan B. Anthony" became national news; one historian noted that it altered the focus of the country from Reconstruction to women's rights.  On June 19, 1873 Susan B. Anthony was found guilty of illegally voting and fined $100.  Anthony refused to pay the penalty and no one ever pursued the matter afterwards.

Anthony used the trial to her advantage and published a pamphlet with the trial proceedings for citizens to read themselves.

A brief but interesting article can be found here.  I recommend you read it!

Election Week Special!

General elections are scheduled on the first Tuesday of November in the United States.  Even though we are not voting for a President this week, most of us will go to the polls to vote our conscious.  Since we are dedicating this blog to suffrage this year, we are featuring a few stories about elections that are significant.

Hillary Clinton wasn't the first woman to run for President.

The first woman to run for that office was actually Victoria C. Woodhull.

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927)

She was a spiritualist, a publisher,  and a free love advocate.  Her free love stance wasn't what you might define as promiscuity; instead she believed that women and men should marry and divorce whomever they chose.  Most of all, she was a advocate for social justice.  She believed in woman's suffrage (a concept she argued in front of Congress), fair wages for women, equal rights for people of color, and supported the rights of labor.  She was also so much more controversial than most candidates.

She ran for president in 1872; her party was the Equal Rights Party.  Her candidacy was full of problems and scandals including her arrest for distributing "obscene" literature--in the form of renouncing Henry Ward Beecher (yes, Harriet Beecher Stowe's father) for an alleged adulterous relationship.  The arrest occurred shortly before the presidential election.  Her party also nominated Frederick Douglass as her vice-president; Douglass never accepted the position and actually campaigned for Ulysses S. Grant.

Suffragists viewed her differently.  I've read that Elizabeth Cady Stanton supported Woodhull but that Susan B. Anthony opposed her running for office--a fact that is supported by what actually happened on November 5, 1872.  That story will appear in tomorrow's edition.

Giveaway winner November 2, 2019

Leeanna is our winner for the animal themed competition!  Yeh LeeAnna! 

Please email me your address so I can get your package in the mail!

Congrats!