Browse Items (40 total)

Nation’s birthday party, 1876. Huge party planned. No women speaking. No women mentioned. So women stormed the stage. One of them was Sara Andrews Spencer. #July4 thread. The day before the event, Spencer hand-delivered a letter from…

Have you heard about the time Frederick Douglass, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and Belva Lockwood all occupied the Washington, D.C. Board of Elections?  #DCStatehood Thread  It’s April 14, 1871. DC’s first city-wide election was less…

We don’t have an affirmative right to vote under the Constitution. There is no explicit promise that citizen = voter. But from 1868-1872, after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, hundreds of white and Black women personally attempted to…

The first time the National Woman’s Party “Silent Sentinels” were arrested, they had been picketing the White House every day for six months. Why were they suddenly being charged? Simple. They embarrassed Pres. Wilson in front of the Russian guests…

Suffragists picketed the White House from 10 am-6pm every day but Sundays. They continued - attacked by mobs, arrested daily - for more than two years. But in their first months, the pickets were greeted warmly. Thread. Until January 1917, no one had…

The day before suffragists started picketing the White House, they were there as invited guests. Access thread. One of the striking things about the decade before ratification is how much access suffragists had to Pres. Wilson - not only the mannerly…

If you’ve ever snuck in somewhere to conduct a secret mission, you know how hard Mabel Vernon’s heart was pounding on December 5, 1916. She was wearing a long cape. It was cold out, so being bundled up wouldn’t arouse suspicion of the U.S. Capitol…

I love this photo, though I doubt the accuracy of its caption. I love that the young African-American man (boy?) is the only one aware of being photographed. I love the woman in the right foreground, mid-sentence. 🧵 The @librarycongress says the…

On July 31, 1913, suffragists commandeered the Senate floor for more than two hours. It was the first time since 1887 that women’s voting rights had been discussed there. How’d they get there? They drove! 🧵 Rosalie Jones’ pilgrimage to Washington for…

Alice Paul & Lucy Burns didn’t rebel against the mainstream suffrage organization. It kicked them out. Natl Am. Woman Suffrage Assoc was an organization of white moderates. Religiously conservative, politically mainstream, proudly respectable.…