The Story of the Woman's PartyGillmore, Inez Haynes
History
The Story of the Woman's Party
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
National Woman's Party; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
“I find these defendants guilty as charged,” was his verdict, “of
obstructing the highway in violation of the police regulations and the
Act of Congress, and impose a fine of twenty-five dollars in each case,
or in default of that, three days’ imprisonment.”
The six young women refused to pay the fine. They were each sentenced to
three days in the District jail.
When the first pickets came out of jail, a hundred women, representing
many States, gave them a reception breakfast in the garden of Cameron
House.
A subsequent chapter will relate the prison experiences of these women
and of the long line of their successors.
* * * * *
The next picket line went out on Independence Day, July 4, 1917. Five
women marched from Headquarters bearing purple, white, and gold banners.
They were: Helena Hill Weed, Vida Milholland, Gladys Greiner, Margaret
Whittemore, Iris Calderhead. Helena Hill Weed carried a banner:
GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWER FROM
THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
Following the advice of the Judge, they kept moving. Across the street,
a crowd had gathered in expectation of arrests. Standing about were
policemen—a newspaper man said twenty-nine. The police walked along
parallel with the women, and the crowd followed them. As the banner
bearers crossed the street to the White House, the police seized them
before they could get onto the sidewalks. An augmenting crowd surged
about them. Some of the onlookers protested, but most of them took their
cue from the police, and tore the flags away from the women. Apart from
the pickets, Kitty Marion, who for some weeks had been selling the
_Suffragist_ on the streets, was attacked by a by-stander who snatched
her papers away from her, tearing one of them up. Miss Marion was
arrested. She protested at the behavior of her assailant and he was
arrested too. Hazel Hunkins, who was not a part of the procession, came
upon a man who had seized one of the banners carried by the pickets and
was bearing it away. Miss Hunkins attempted to get it from him, and she
also was arrested.
The police commandeered automobiles, and commenced bundling the women
into them.
Immediately another group of women came marching up Pennsylvania Avenue
on the opposite side of the street. This second group contained Mrs.
Frances Green, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Lucile Shields, Joy Young, Elizabeth
Stuyvesant, Lucy Burns. Joy Young, who is a little creature, led this
group. They reached the West gate of the White House, and there the
police arrested them. A Washington paper described with great glee how,
like a tigress, little Joy Young fought to retain her banner, and how
finally three policemen managed to overpower her. The women were booked
for “unlawful assembly” all except Kitty Marion, who was charged with
“disorderly conduct.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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