Mr. President, how long must we wait?”

Mr. President, how long must we wait?” -Alice Paul

During the late 18th century, the framers of the U.S. Constitution decided that only white men who owned property could legally vote in U.S. elections. (Lawmakers in some states also disenfranchised Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and other religious minority groups.) By the mid-19th century, most states had removed religion and property ownership as requirements to vote. In 1870, Congress ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to enfranchise African American men. Amendment XV reads, “…the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Women could not vote in federal elections until 1920.

In 1916, women’s rights activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns founded the National Woman’s Party (NWP), the “militant” wing of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. NWP protesters used non-violent civil disobedience, including picketing and hunger strikes, to advocate for women’s right to vote. In 1917, police arrested NWP members, including Alice Paul, for “obstructing traffic” while picketing the White House. (Fact: The NWP was the first group of political protesters to picket the White House.) The court sentenced protestors to the notorious Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, where prison authorities harassed, intimidated, and beat them. The prison’s medical staff even force-fed Alice Paul after she went on a hunger strike, and subsequently relocated her to the prison’s psychiatric ward.

The NWP’s “radical” tactics, combined with the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) lobby for the right to vote, ultimately exhausted the opposition. Albeit reluctantly, President Woodrow Wilson endorsed an amendment to enfranchise women. In 1918, the House of Representatives passed the Nineteenth Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Upon ratification in 1920, women finally could vote in federal elections. Discussion Question Set:

1. Examine the “Anti-Woman Suffrage Poster” (1912) below. What does its message convey about stereotypes of women in American society?

2. Only land-owning white men could vote in the late 1700’s, followed by poor white men in the 1850s, African American men in 1870, and women in 1920, despite women’s decades-long lobby for the right to vote. What does this convey about the hierarchy of race, class, and sex in the U.S., both past and present?

3. Watch the reenactment of the force-feeding of Alice Paul in the feature film, Iron Jawed Angels (2004), below. Why do you think the treatment of imprisoned suffragists generated support for their cause? Support your opinion with observations from the film.

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Anti-Woman Suffrage Poster. 1912. Print. Wisconsin Historical Society.

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Iron Jawed Angels (2004) Force-Feeding Scene