The stunning program cover for the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington.
The giant Women’s March on Washington
and sister marches across the country that greeted Donald Trump’s
inauguration in January 2017 and they-said-it-couldn’t-be-done even larger marches a year later were seismic events that brought a broad, united, new
intersessional feminism to the forefront
of American social and political life after years on the defense as hard-fought gains once thought
secure were under attack at
every level.
Mass demonstrations no matter how
large, critics maintained, had lost
their power as the media lost interest in them and the public became bored.
Huge anti-war demonstrations that broke all records were barely covered by the press and had no discernable effect on curtailing
a vastly unpopular war in Congress or in the Bush administration and only moderately moved the needle
during the Obama years when painfully slow withdrawals of boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan were matched
by a brutal escalation of bombing and drone attacks not only in those two countries but across the region.
The Women's March on Washington was a rough welcome to Trump and a game changer for the feminist movement.
Instead,
the media became fixated with a shiny new object—the tiny but colorful Tea Party
movement. Events
drawing a few dozen in silly hats waving Don’t Tread on Me flags, and toting misspelled homemade
signs received lead coverage night
after night on network and cable TV news. Part of it was the sheer novelty of a right wing “grassroots” movement.
Traditional conservatives were
at first dismissive and doubtful, but a hand-full of deep pocket millionaires saw potential
pumped unlimited money into the
movement, created faux grassroots
national organizations to “lead it,” and soon used it to capture the Republican Party for
their oligarchical aims. Within what seemed like a blink of an eye they were in control of dozens of state governments, Congress, and the Presidency
and seemed capable of completely remaking America with no effective opposition.
But
there were signs of restiveness and resistance—the Occupy
Movement that spread like wildfire, the up-from-the-streets youth-led
Black Lives Matter movement, the May Day Immigration Rights marches and
the rise of the Dreamers, the new Civil Rights movement represented
by Moral Mondays. But it was the Women’s Marches, perhaps because
they included so many middle class white women, that finally recaptured
the media and nation’s attention.
To
its credit the Women’s March movement has, not always smoothly, taken pains
to broaden its leadership and representation and to stand
for an intersessional struggle that includes not just traditional feminist
objectives like preserving abortion rights, removing obstacles
to social and professional advancement, the Equal Rights Amendment,
and election of women, but support for Women of Color, immigrants
and refugees, Muslims and other minority religions, the LBGTQ
communities, Native Americans, the disabled, the labor
movement, and environmentalists. It has not been a perfect
process and serious divisions remain over issues like electoral
politics, particularly endorsement of Democrats, and levels
of street militancy, but it has been a game changer.
One
109 years ago today, another march of women in Washington, in some ways quite
different, marked a radical turning point in the long struggle
for women’s suffrage and became a spiritual ancestor of today’s
movements.
Alice Paul was inspired by the militant campaigns of the British
Suffragettes led by Emmeline Pankhurst seen under arrest in the right
foreground and her daughter Christabel in custody behind her.
Alice
Paul and Lucy Burns were uppity women. Worse they were angry, uppity women. They
were more youthful than the dowagers whose decades’ long drive for women’s suffrage had been noble, but fruitless. Paul had been in England and was impressed with
how Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, leaders of a new militant suffrage movement which was making a sensation by using direct action tactics such as publicly heckling politicians, window smashing, and rock throwing raising the profile of
the cause there.
When Paul returned to the United States in 1910 she joined the National American Women’s Suffrage
Association (NAWSA) and soon advanced to a leadership role. Although the national organization was committed
to a state-by-state strategy as its top priority, Paul was made Chair of the Congressional Committee with the responsibility of lobbying for Federal action. Carrie
Chapman Catt, formidable leader of the NAWSA, did not have much faith in Paul or her project, but was probably glad to have the gadfly out her hair in New York where she was carefully planning an elaborate political effort to win state approval of the Vote by referendum.
By 1912 Paul and Burns set up shop in the Capitol as the as a semi-autonomous
affiliate of the NAWSA called the Congressional
Union.
Carrie Chapman Catt of New York was the formidable head
of the National American Women's Suffrage Association. She would split
with Alice Paul over strategy and style and the two were sometimes
bitter rivals. Their two pronged suffrage campaign, moderate and
radical, actually complimented each other and help rapidly move to
the goal. But when the 19th Amendment was ratified, it was the moderate
Catt, not the bur-under-the-saddle Paul who was invited to the Wilson
White House.
In the Presidential election that year, Catt had broken ranks with many older
suffragists who were traditionally
Republican, and endorsed Woodrow Wilson, a distinguished
academic and supposedly a new breed
of progressive Democrat,
in the hopes that he would swing his party behind
suffrage.
Paul, however, did not want to wait for a painfully slow
lobbing process to nudge the new
Chief Executive in the right
direction. She declared her intention to “hold his feet to the fire” from the very beginning with a huge
Suffrage demonstration on the eve of his inaugural.
Don’t imagine a modern march on Washington with mobs of somewhat disorganized marchers in pink pussy caps carrying banners, signs, and puppets in a mass throng on the Capitol’s wide avenues. Paul’s Woman
Suffrage Procession was planned out with military precision, the
thousands of women marchers were arrayed
in designated units, marching
abreast. Most units wore white,
the symbol of purity and adopted color of the suffrage
movement. The procession would be led by equestrians and floats
with women as various allegorical
figures broke up the ranks of marchers.
An elaborate program was printed for onlookers and a proper parade permit had been obtained from local authorities.
Wilson arrived by train from his New
Jersey home on Monday, March 3, 1913, the day before his inauguration. As the first Democrat since Grover
Cleveland to break the grip of Republican dominance and as a man of known Southern roots and sympathies,
he likely expected a
whoopsie-do reception in the culturally
Southern city. Instead, only a handful of dignitaries, politicians, and the press were at hand. Everybody
else in town seems to have been lining
Pennsylvania Avenue.
Inez Milholland on her white steed was a dramatic and compelling lead to the Woman Suffrage Processional.
No wonder, for Paul had put on a dazzling show led by the beautiful blonde lawyer and activist
Inez Milholland astride a white
horse in flowing Greek robes. Behind her, Paul and her friends, also on
horseback, led 8,000 marchers,
almost all women, and on parade.
An estimated half a million viewers crowded the route including cheering
supporters, the idly curious, a
lot of very, very angry men.
The procession was quickly attacked by mobs of men along the route, throwing rocks and battering participants with clubs
and fists as the police stood by without intervening. Retaining as much courage and dignity as they could muster, the marchers continued on their
route while running a virtual gauntlet. Before the rear of the march reached its destination some hastily
mobilized troops from Fort Myer arrived
to provide some protection. Over 800
marchers, almost all women, were injured
in the attacks.
Mobs of men swarm and menace an ambulance trying to transport injured
marchers as police stood by. It took Army troops to restore order and
allow the parade to finish. Despite the violence, maybe because of it,
Paul knew the Procession was a triumph.
Reaction to the parade and the attacks threatened to overwhelm
news of the Presidential
inauguration the next day,
much to the annoyance of
Wilson. And to the delight of Paul who regarded
the operation as successful in every way. She was sure that public outrage would lead to greater support of the cause.
A subsequent investigation
held the police derelict in their duty for failing to
protect the lawful demonstration and the District of Columbia Police Chief was fired.
In New York Catt was less than thrilled and feared the bold confrontation would alienate
male supporters critical for her state-by-state campaign. None-the-less
Catt staged her own giant parade
down Fifth Avenue in May as the kick-off for her ballot initiative
plan. A fifth the marchers in her parade were men.
Alice Paul and her Federal strategy was big news in the New York Times.
The breach over militancy
and confrontation between Catt and
Paul became irreparable in 1914 and
Paul’s group severed ties with the national organization. Two years later they reorganized as the National
Women’s Party (NWP.)
They continued to press Wilson for action
with daily picketing at the White House. When the picketing continued even after the country entered the Great War in Europe, Wilson had Paul and dozens of her associates and supporters
arrested, jailed, and force-fed during hunger strikes. When word
got out about the abuse,
Wilson was embarrassed yet again.
Exasperated, Wilson finally declared support of a Federal Constitutional Amendment for
women’s suffrage as a “war measure”
and in recognition of the contribution of women to
the effort. He made no mention of Paul or the NWP, but no one doubted that their stubborn
militancy had forced his hand.
Alice Paul raises a grape juice toast to the banner that she and members
of the National Women's Party sewed by hand to hang on their
Washington, D.C. headquarters building in celebration of the
ratification of the 19th Amendment just over 7 years after the Suffrage
Procession--a remarkably swift victory.
Both houses of Congress passed the 19th
Amendment in 1919. Then the battle moved to ratification by
state legislatures and the state-by-state struggle advocated by Catt was
back on. The NAWSA and NWP played a kind of “good cop/bad cop” tag team on state legislatures with
Catt’s group wooing them with compliments and charm,
and Paul threatening disruption and defiance.
It proceeded, all
things considered, with astonishing speed. On August 19, 1920 Tennessee passed the Amendment by one vote in the legislature, securing the necessary support to become a part of the Constitution. When the Secretary
of State certified the adoption on August 26, Paul and
her cohorts proudly unfolded a
banner on the NWP headquarters
building in Washington and toasted the event—with grape juice, of course.
