Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
It was announced that the President would return to America on February
24th. That would leave seven days in which he could act before the
session ended on March 3d. We determined to make another dramatic
effort to move him further.
Boston was to be the President’s landing place. Boston, where ancient
liberties are so venerated, and modern ones so abridged. No more
admirable place could have been found to welcome the President home in
true militant fashion.
Wishing the whole world to know that women were greeting President
Wilson, why they were greeting him, and what form of demonstration the
greetings would assume, we announced our plans in advance. Upon his
arrival a line of pickets would hold banners silently calling to the
President’s attention the demand for his effective aid. In the
afternoon they would hold a meeting in Boston Common and there burn the
parts of the President’s Boston speech which should pertain to
democracy and liberty. These announcements were met with official alarm
of almost unbelievable extent. Whereas front pages had been given over
heretofore to publishing the elaborate plans for the welcome to be
extended to the President, eulogies of the President, and recitals of
his great triumph abroad, now the large proportion of this space was
devoted to clever plans of the police to outwit the suffragists. The
sustained publicity of this demonstration was unprecedented. It
actually filled the Boston papers for all of two weeks.
A “deadline,” a diagram of which appeared in the press, was to be
established beyond which no suffragist, no matter how enterprising,
could penetrate to harass the over-worked President with foolish ideas
about the importance of liberty for women. Had not this great man the
cares of the world on his shoulders? This was no time to talk about
liberty for women! The world was rocking and a great peace conference
was sitting, and the President was just returning to report on the work
done so far. The Boston descendants of the early revolutionists would
do their utmost to see that no untoward event should mar the perfection
of their plans. They would see to it that the sacred soil of the old
Boston Common should not be disgraced.
It was a perfect day. Lines of marines whose trappings shone
brilliantly in the clear sunshine were in formation to hold back the
crowds from the Reviewing stand where the President should appear after
heading the procession in his honor. It seemed as if all Boston were on
hand for the welcome. A slender file of twenty-two women marched
silently into the sunshine, slipped through the “deadline,” and made
its way to the base‘ of the Reviewing stand. There it unfurled its
beautiful banners and took up its post directly facing the line of
marines which was supposed to keep all suffragists at bay. Quite calmly
and yet triumphantly, they stood there, a pageant of beauty and defiant
appeal, which not even the most hurried passerby could fail to see and
comprehend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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