The excitement of voting for Barack Obama is upon us. We have a candidate we are truly thrilled to cast our ballots for. Also, historic is the fact that he will soon be the first African-American to become president of the US.
It was also a historic election cycle for women with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Women were not granted the right to vote until 1920. Hillary likes to point out that when her mother was born, women did not have the right to vote. And now in 2008, daughter Chelsea was able to vote for her mother for president of the United States. Yes, we've come a long way baby. But it was not without struggle and sacrifice.
So, I'd like you to take a moment to remember "The Night of Terror," Nov. 15, 1917, a story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers. They lived only 90 years ago.
more pictures and story below
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
(Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.
(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
http://memory.loc.gov/...
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
HBO produced a movie called Iron Jawed Angels,available on DVD. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I and all other women could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say.
What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but even those of us aware of history. Remembering the sacrifice of these women has made my right to vote become valuable to me all over again.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. When you vote, remember them.