Holding the party in power responsible
Imagine it’s next year. The Democrats control the House, the Senate, the White House. You’re a Dreamer working to pass immigration reform to make you and your family full citizens. It’s been 35 years with no progress. But the Democrats won’t move the bill. What do you do? 🧵<br /><br />One of Alice Paul/Lucy Burns' innovations was to hold the Democrats responsible for their inaction on suffrage. In 1914, Democrats controlled Congress and the presidency. Suffragists had a small but respectable base of Congressional support, but suffrage wasn’t a party priority. <br /><br />When Woodrow Wilson championed a bill, Congress had passed it. But Wilson refused to promote suffrage. Until then, suffrage politics had been all carrot, no stick. The 1st generation were abolitionists closely aligned w/Republicans, but for decades NAWSA had been non-partisan. <br /><br />They feared that taking sides, playing rough & making demands was “unfeminine,†a suffragist stereotype they were determined to disprove. Alice preferred to flex and show some power. <br /><br />Her approach was to hold ALL Democrats responsible for the party’s failure to move suffrage. Even the sympathizers. Exempting the supporters would leave them to bear the irritation of their peers - the strategy only worked if the whole party felt pressure. <br /><br />In practice, Alice’s group - at this point called the Congressional Union - would target a few swing districts where they might be able to shift the balance of power. See a clipping from the Woman’s Journal with a very even-handed description of the plan. <br /><br />Holding the party in power responsible was a Pankhurst tactic. The NAWSA leadership was appalled. To them it was aggressive, ungrateful, and naive. Anna Shaw & Carrie Catt insisted that what worked in a parliamentary democracy wouldn’t work in the U.S. <br /><br />Lucy & Alice argued that with the Democrats in full control, it should. “Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful than the Democratic Party is today,†said Lucy Burns to the NAWSA convention at the end of 1913. <br /><br />“Those who hold power are responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible not only for what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction establishes just as clear a record as does a policy of open hostility.†#Suffrage100 #19thAmendment Jul 23, 2020
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22/07/2020
Suffrage colors explained
In writing about what it means to “look like a mom,†@<a href="https://twitter.com/VVFriedman" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VVFriedman</a> reported that the yellow t-shirts Portland moms wear are intended to evoke sunshine, joy, warmth. The protesters even carry sunflowers to reinforce - which connects them directly to suffrage's color palette.🎨🧵 <br /><br />Sunflower yellow was the only good thing to come out of the 1867 referendum in Kansas. Local suffragists made cloth ribbons in the color of the state flower >> yellow caught on as “the distinguishing badge of the woman suffrage army.†It eventually became NAWSA’s official color. <br /><br />In the UK, the Pankhursts’ WSPU sought to distinguish themselves from other suffrage groups. Purple represented “the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity;†white for purity; green for hope & “the emblem of spring.†<br /><br />Harriot Stanton Blatch honored the Pankhursts by using their colors for her Women’s Political Union. In New York suffrage marches 1910-1917, women wore sashes in a variety of colors reflecting different groups, usually over a white dress -- for effect, and virginal femininity. <br /><br />Alice Paul & Lucy Burns formally adopted purple/yellow/white as their group’s colors shortly after the 1913 Washington march. They were still a NAWSA committee then, not yet the National Woman’s Party - and their colors merge NAWSA’s yellow with the Pankhursts’ white & purple. <br /><br />Or do they? They explain their choice in one of the first issues of the Suffragist newspaper. White for purity, purple for loyalty and steadfastness (not royalty), and “gold, the color of light and life, is as the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving.†<br /><br />No reference to sunflower yellow or honoring their connection to NAWSA. But they do invoke the life-giving sunshine that inspired suffragists all the way back in Kansas in 1867 - and<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/style/wall-of-moms-image.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> inspires the white moms in Portland today</a>. #Suffrage100 #19thAmendment
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30/07/2020
National Woman's Party nomenclature
What was the National Woman’s Party? How did it differ from the Congressional Union? Was that different from the Congressional Committee? The effort led by Alice Paul & Lucy Burns to amend the U.S. Constitution operated under three different names across eight years. 🧵 <br /><br />Each name change was gradual, and the boundaries are blurry. Shorthanding it as National Woman’s Party is fine; only serious suffrage obsessives care about NWP v. CU v. CC. But August is going to be a long centennial month, so here's a cheat sheet... <br /><br />CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE (CC) was a standing NAWSA committee founded in 1910. It was marginal, as NAWSA was then totally focused on state campaigns. Hence NAWSA VP Jane Addams (yes, THE Jane Addams) could persuade the board to let Alice Paul become committee chair in late 1912. <br /><br />It was under the CC name that Alice & Lucy organized the 1913 Inauguration march. A month after the march, Alice & Lucy organized the CONGRESSIONAL UNION (CU), affiliated with NAWSA but not run by it. <br /><br />The CU was Alice & Lucy’s attempt to remain under the NAWSA brand, but with more control over the money they were raising to support the federal amendment. CC & CU had overlapping leadership. NAWSA Pres. Anna Howard Shaw had approved this, but it quickly became unworkable.<br /><br />By the end of 1913 NAWSA had wrested control of the CC from Alice, replacing her as chair. In January 1914, 400 women met at a palatial Washington home and encouraged Alice to form an independent Congressional Union. Alice & Lucy organized under that name through the end of 1916. <br /><br />NATIONAL WOMAN’S PARTY was created for the 1916 general election to be exactly what the name says - a party of voting women, a third-party spoiler like the Progressive Party was in 1912. (More to come on the election of 1916.) <br /><br />In early 1917, the Congressional Union merged into the National Woman's Party. NWP is then the name of Alice & Lucy’s organization all the way to ratification. #19thAmendment #Suffrage100Â
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04/08/2020
Founding of a new party
Presidential conventions. Eh. 2020 conventions planned for Charlotte, Jacksonville & Milwaukee may end up being nowhere at all. But in 1916, the Democrats met in St. Louis. The Republicans met in Chicago - along with a new party: the National Woman’s Party. NWP founding🧵 <br /><br />The National Woman’s Party didn’t expect to capture the votes of ALL 4 million women voters. The idea was to convince enough women voting in tight races to vote against Democrats, punishing them for not doing more to help disenfranchised women nationwide. <br /><br />Alice Paul had tested the theory in the 1914 midterms and found that it worked: it put suffrage on the political agenda. Democrats, who controlled the House, Senate & White House, were on notice that they would have to act. Suffragist Dr. Cora King summed up the political effect: “[It] will never be unanimously agreed upon...some declaring you did no harm to the Democrats but great harm to the women’s cause & others that you are the saviour of women. But party leaders...will come out for suffrage MUCH sooner because of the trouble you have made them.†<br /><br />By the 1916 general election, Alice had a powerful new ally: Harriot Stanton Blatch. After the failure of the NY law, Blatch was done w/the state-by-state approach forever. She merged her Women’s Political Union and its well-connected members into the fight for a federal amdt. <br /><br />Harriot and 22 other women spent the spring barnstorming western states to recruit Woman’s Party members. Five weeks riding the rails was not glamorous. Winifred Mallon wrote home: “Am very tired and dirty and dusty and my head aches and the train is jiggling fearfully.†<br /><br />Their effort succeeded in winning some converts. 1,000+ women gathered in Chicago in June 1916 for the inaugural convention of the National Woman’s Party. <a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/451" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Recall that Chicago women could vote for President, thanks to their 1913 victory</a>. 👉<br /><br />As a show of white women’s political power, the NWP launch was a success. Every other party sent an ambassador: Democrats, Republicans, Prohibition, Progressive & Socialist parties. Harriot Stanton Blatch pledged to deliver 500,000 votes; Alva Belmont pledged to raise $500,000. <br /><br />Alice Paul didn’t speak at the NWP convention. Instead she put voters like Maud Younger of California and Anne Martin of Nevada in the spotlight. @<a href="https://twitter.com/jdzah" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">jdzah</a> points out that having women voters lead NWP could rebut criticism that Alice was meddling, unwelcome, in state affairs. The NWP dream was to block Wilson from a second term, or at least make him fear their power. It would take real fortitude - to succeed they would have to fight Republicans, Democrats, and other suffragists. #19thAmendment #WomensVote100Â
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07/08/2020
Suffrage for white women
By the 1916 election, it was clear the Nat'l Woman’s Party strategy was working: a federal constitutional amendment had become a live political issue. NAWSA couldn’t beat NWP, so they were going to have to join them. But neither group was willing to confront its own racism.🧵 <br /><br />For years NAWSA had supported a federal amendment strategy only tepidly, in deference to their southern members. These white women insisted on a “states rights†approach - meaning, no votes for Black women and no new federal oversight of voting. <br /><br />0But NAWSA’s state by state strategy wasn’t delivering. The painful 1915 losses in NY, NJ, MA & PA were followed by more losses in 1916. By then Carrie Chapman Catt had replaced Anna Howard Shaw as head of NAWSA. Catt was a stronger leader and a more skillful strategist. <br /><br />Catt saw that if NAWSA refused to engage on a federal strategy they would tempt political irrelevance. Though Catt would never have said so publicly, Alice Paul had made a federal amendment a possibility - and forced NAWSA into supporting it. <br /><br />NAWSA’s embrace of a federal amendment did not represent an epiphany about the evil of white supremacy. Nor did Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party expect one. On the contrary: both white women’s suffrage organizations continued to accommodate a racist ideology. <br /><br />While rejecting explicit “whites only†voting laws, they encouraged the argument that votes for southern women would STRENGTHEN white supremacy. Meaning, southern states could expect white women wd vote and Black women & men could not. (This IS what happened for the next 45 yrs.) <br /><br />White suffragists believed that in order to win, they had to reassure southern politicians they could enfranchise women while keeping Jim Crow. They understood that southern Black women wouldn’t be included in the victory - but they weren’t the ones suffragists were fighting for. <br /><br />Alice Paul (and Susan B. Anthony before her) knew race discrimination was wrong, but insisted it was a separate issue, unrelated to women’s right to vote. Carrie Catt (like Elizabeth Cady Stanton earlier) didn’t care if Black women were excluded.<br /><br />Mary Church Terrell, Hallie Q. Brown, W.E.B. DuBois & other Black activists were working for voting rights. White suffragists could have collaborated w/them to demand that every citizen get the ballot. But racism - their own, the nation’s - kept them from making common cause.
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09/08/2020
Suffrage martyr
President Wilson surely thought the National Woman’s Party women were nasty. They campaigned ferociously against his reelection in western states in 1916. That October they stood boldly on the streets of Chicago and New York, so his motorcade would pass women protesting him. 🧵 <br /><br />He very nearly lost. Most California women could vote, and had 3,806 of them voted the other way, the state’s 13 electoral votes and the Presidency would have gone to Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson went to bed that night thinking he was a one-term president. <br /><br />But Wilson was reelected, and all the suffrage ballot measures in various eastern states failed. Then, just a few weeks after the election, Inez Milholland died. She had collapsed onstage campaigning against the Democrats - her last words: “How long must women wait?†<br /><br />One of the most famous and glamorous suffragists, literally a poster girl, had given her life for the cause. With the family’s blessing, Alice Paul created vivid political theatre - a memorial service on Christmas Day in the rotunda of the US Capitol. <br /><br />The symbolism was thick: Inez’s Christlike sacrifice was memorialized in the seat of male political power, with 1,000 people attending. No woman had ever been recognized there, and none would again until Rosa Parks died in 2005. <br /><br />The hall was decorated in NWP purple, white, and gold, with flags on every chair. A boys choir sang the suffrage hymn “Forward out of darkness.†Maud Younger gave a stirring speech. 1916 was ending, and Wilson’s second term was about to begin. #19thAmendment #Suffrage100
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12/08/2020
Access to the White House
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The day before suffragists started picketing the White House, they were there as invited guests. <br /><br /><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Access thread.</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-4qtqp9 r-ip8ujx r-sjv1od r-zw8f10 r-bnwqim r-h9hxbl"></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">One of the striking things about the decade before ratification is how much access suffragists had to Pres. Wilson - not only the mannerly women of NAWSA, but Alice Paul & Congressional Union/National Woman’s Party too. At least in the first term.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">(Wilson was far less welcoming to African Americans - his first-term meetings with Black leaders, including IdaBWells, were stilted or openly offensive. When Monroe Trotter asked him to explain segregation in federal jobs, Wilson exploded, saying no American had ever spoken to him so rudely.)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">But white women got a different kind of solicitude - even Mabel Vernon, who only a month earlier had hijacked Woodrow Wilson’s State of the Union speech with a dramatic banner drop. <br /><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1294381523173613568" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">See</a> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">She and 300 other suffragists were welcomed to the White House to deliver a new raft of 19th Amdt petitions gathered at memorials for martyred Inez Milholland.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The suffragists gathered in the East Room of the White House. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sara Bard Field spoke for the group. She promised that women would never give up; yet they had paid their dues and it was past time. “We are asking, how long, how long, must this struggle go on?” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Wilson was affronted. He thought they were coming for some kind of bereavement call, where he could pay his respects to Milholland without being asked to DO anything. He said so, huffily. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Then he chastised them for not understanding the Democrats were their allies, and stormed out.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The next day, the National Woman’s Party began picketing the White House.</span></p>
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17/08/2020
Picketing the White House begins
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. <br /><br />But in their first months, the pickets were greeted warmly. Thread. <br /><br />Until January 1917, no one had ever done what they were doing. Frustrated at President Wilson’s refusal to support a federal suffrage amendment, they were the first Americans to stand outside the mansion in protest. <br /><br />The picketers walked 4-hour shifts, leaving only when relief arrived. They continued in every kind of weather, though in heavy rain and snow shifts were shortened to 2 hours. To stay warm, the janitor from Nat’l Woman’s Party headquarters brought wheelbarrows of hot bricks to stand on. In this picture from January 26, they’re standing on boards to keep their feet drier. <br /><br />National Woman’s Party members from around the country traveled to Washington to picket. These women from Minnesota might have been the only ones with warm enough clothing! They're in front of NWP's office on Lafayette Square, in sight of the White House. <br /><br />There were state days, days for different professions, a wage earners’ day, a women voters day (for women from western states). Alice Paul asked Mary Church Terrell to join the pickets, and she did, bringing her teenage daughter Phyllis too. <br /><br />Alice Paul knew of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s non-violent tactics in South Africa, and trained the National Woman’s Party picketers: do not respond to taunts, do not lash back, refuse to be provoked. <br /><br />This was easy at first, as the initial public reception was positive. People came to watch, and many expressed support for the cause and admiration for the effort. The women’s tenacity - especially in winter - earned respect even from suffrage skeptics. <br /><br />But the goodwill evaporated when the U.S. went to war.
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22/08/2020
Entering WWI
Woodrow Wilson was staunchly opposed to two things: entering the war in Europe, and supporting women’s suffrage. He gave in on the war first. <br /><br />Wilson cut diplomatic relations with Germany just before his second inauguration. He had sought desperately to keep the US out of the war, but the news that Germany was negotiating an alliance with Mexico was too much. The US was headed into WWI. <br /><br />White suffragists took very different approaches to the war. Carrie Chapman Catt, though a founder of the Woman’s Peace Party, wanted NAWSA to support the war effort. She saw it as a chance to prove women’s patriotism and ability to contribute - and to curry favor with Wilson. <br /><br />Alice Paul wanted nothing to distract from winning a federal suffrage amendment. History loomed: her foremothers had set aside women’s rights during the Civil War to devote themselves to ending slavery & preserving the Union. The resulting legal setbacks for women were profound. <br /><br />Alice wasn’t going to let that happen again - nor could she bear Wilson’s hypocritical language about going to war for democracy and freedom. Woman’s Party members were free to support the war under other banners, but NWP would take no position on it.
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23/08/2020
Foreign Policy, Public Embarrassment
The first time the National Woman’s Party “Silent Sentinels†were arrested, they had been picketing the White House every day for six months. <br /><br />Why were they suddenly being charged? Simple. They embarrassed Pres. Wilson in front of the Russian guests he wanted to impress. Thread. <br /><br />In the years Wilson spent avoiding the war, 1.7 million Russians had been killed. Now that the US was in, Wilson was desperate to convince the Russians to keep fighting. But in the very month Woodrow Wilson was sworn in for a 2nd term, Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. <br /><br />Wilson needed to convince a very different Russian government - represented by Ambd. Boris Bakhmetieff, above with wife and dog - that they were all on the same team. In Russia, however, the government was listening to women. <br /><br />When the Russian monarchy was overthrown in the name of democracy, Russian women demanded it be genuine. 40,000 women demonstrated in the streets of St. Petersburg👇and they won. In 1917 Russia became the biggest nation yet to enfranchise women. <br /><br />The meaning was lost on Wilson. He sent American diplomats to woo the Russians, assuring them that the US was a kindred spirit that provided “universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage.†20 million women - and almost all Black men - would beg to differ. But Wilson didn’t think they mattered. <br /><br />The National Woman’s Party would remind him. As the Russian delegation approached the White House on June 20, 1917, Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis were waiting for them with a large banner. <br /><br />ᴛᴠᴛʜᴇ ʀᴜꜱꜱɪᴀɴ ᴇɴᴠá´Êꜱ, á´¡á´‡ ᴛʜᴇ á´¡á´á´á´‡É´ á´êœ° á´€á´á´‡Ê€Éªá´„á´€ ᴛᴇʟʟ Êá´á´œ ᴛʜᴀᴛ á´€á´á´‡Ê€Éªá´„á´€ ɪꜱ É´á´á´› á´€ á´…á´‡á´á´á´„ʀᴀᴄÊ. á´›á´¡á´‡É´á´›Ê á´ÉªÊŸÊŸÉªá´É´ á´€á´á´‡Ê€Éªá´„ᴀɴ á´¡á´á´á´‡É´ ᴀʀᴇ ᴅᴇɴɪᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ᴛᴠᴠá´á´›á´‡. ᴘʀᴇꜱ ᴡɪʟꜱá´É´ ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜɪᴇꜰ á´á´˜á´˜á´É´á´‡É´á´› á´êœ° ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ɴᴀᴛɪá´É´á´€ÊŸ ᴇɴꜰʀᴀɴᴄʜɪꜱᴇá´á´‡É´á´›. ʜᴇʟᴘ ᴜꜱ á´á´€á´‹á´‡ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɴᴀᴛɪá´É´ Ê€á´‡á´€ÊŸÊŸÊ êœ°Ê€á´‡á´‡. ᴛᴇʟʟ á´á´œÊ€ É¢á´á´ ᴇʀɴá´á´‡É´á´› ɪᴛ á´á´œêœ±á´› ʟɪʙᴇʀᴀᴛᴇ ɪᴛꜱ ᴘᴇá´á´˜ÊŸá´‡ ʙᴇꜰá´Ê€á´‡ ɪᴛ ᴄᴀɴ ᴄʟᴀɪᴠꜰʀᴇᴇ ʀᴜꜱꜱɪᴀ ᴀꜱ ᴀɴ ᴀʟʟÊ. <br /><br />After the Russian delegation entered the White House, a mob of onlookers tore the banner out of Lucy and Dora’s hands. National Woman’s Party sentinels returned the next day with a similar banner. The administration was embarrassed and irritated - this had gone on long enough. <br /><br />The DC police chief visited National Woman’s Party HQ to tell Alice Paul they would be arrested if they kept picketing. Alice pointed out that they had been picketing for six months and had every right to do so. Then she handpicked her team for the following day. <br /><br />To join Lucy Burns, the very bravest, Alice recruited Katharine Morey of Boston. Alice explained that arrest was highly likely. “I am willing,†Morey replied. <br /><br />The next day, Burns & Morey returned to the White House with a new banner. This one simply used Wilson’s own words. <br /><br />á´¡á´‡ ꜱʜᴀʟʟ ꜰɪɢʜᴛ ꜰá´Ê€ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ á´¡á´‡ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀʟᴡᴀÊꜱ ʜᴇʟᴅ ɴᴇᴀʀᴇꜱᴛ á´á´œÊ€ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛꜱ -- ꜰá´Ê€ á´…á´‡á´á´á´„Ê€á´€á´„Ê -- ꜰá´Ê€ ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ á´êœ° ᴛʜá´êœ±á´‡ ᴡʜᴠꜱᴜʙá´Éªá´› ᴛᴠᴀᴜᴛʜá´Ê€Éªá´›Ê ᴛᴠʜᴀᴠᴇ á´€ á´ á´Éªá´„á´‡ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ á´á´¡É´ É¢á´á´ ᴇʀɴá´á´‡É´á´›. <br /><br />They were arrested and then released; four more women were arrested and released the next day. The police clearly expected that these well-connected white women would be scared off by being arrested. They were wrong. <br /><br />#suffrage100 #19thAmendment
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Sept 23, 2020