Tag: feminist history

A secret diary kept by Elizabeth McShane in Occoquan has also come into the hands of the National Woman’s Party.

Despite the fact that Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis, leaders of the week-old hunger strike at Occoquan, have been transferred to D.C.’s District Jail, the remaining strikers remain as committed as ever.

The number of suffragists being subjected to the ordeal of force-feeding has suddenly increased from two to five.

No word from – or about – the suffragists being held in Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse and D.C.’s District Jail today.

Sixteen of the suffragists imprisoned in Occoquan Workhouse are continuing the hunger strike they began upon arrival on the evening of the 14th.

Hunger strike!

It’s not easy to shock the suffragists who have been picketing President Wilson over his refusal to support or work for the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment, but today they were truly caught by surprise.

Where did the 41 suffragists arrested yesterday while trying to picket along the White House fence spend part of what may be their last day of freedom before their trials tomorrow? Inside the walls of the District of Columbia Jail.

Tonight’s final speaker was Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who expressed the kind of unbounded optimism that is now becoming widespread in the aftermath of this landmark victory.

The suffrage army’s advance now seems unstoppable.

The final suffrage meetings and rallies are still going on, and leaders are making sure that their armies of volunteers who have been working almost non-stop through two successive campaigns are ready to shift gears overnight and work just as hard to assure a fair election.

Though the outcome won’t be known for at least 48 hours, the kind of unprecedented organizing that’s gone on, and the high degree of support for suffrage that’s being expressed, has made for a good deal of justifiable optimism.

In Massachusetts tonight, eight thousand women are preparing to stand their shifts 100 feet from the polls tomorrow.

“In the face of this great calamity of war, how can men say that government could be made worse by the participation of women?”

From elevated stages to down in the subways, “Votes for Women” advocates seemed to be everywhere, as did the color of “suffrage yellow.”

Of course, no amount of confidence will lead to any slackening of efforts between now and November 2nd.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column. Standing in the large, cheering crowd at 59th Street and 8th Avenue tonight watching the torchlight suffrage parade, it’s hard to imagine how the New York campaign could possibly get any more intense than it has been up until now. But that’s exactly what’s about to happen in […]

With just nine days left until three big Eastern States vote on woman suffrage referenda, the battle for women’s equality at the polls goes on in large cities as well as small towns, and is being waged by both women and men.

Just eight days to go until New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts vote on woman suffrage, so the campaign in the Empire State, like everywhere else, is reaching its peak.

This was truly a great day to be a suffragist – or in some cases, to become one.