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
Helena Hill Weed and Lucy Burns cross-examined the witnesses on behalf
of the women. Mrs. Weed insisted that the torn, yellow banner should be
brought into court. Throughout the trial, it hung suspended from the
Judge’s bench—GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF
THE GOVERNED. Lucy Burns, examining the police officers, asked why
citizens carrying banners on June 21 were protected by the police, and
on July 4 arrested for doing the same thing. The officer replied that
they were protected on June 21 because he had no orders for that day.
The orders which came later were, he said, not to allow picketing,
though he admitted there were no directions about seizing banners. The
women brought out by skillful cross-questioning that it was the action
of the police which had collected a disorderly crowd, and not the
marching of the two groups of women; that at the former trial of a group
of Suffrage pickets, the Judge himself had declared that marching
pickets did not violate the law.
Lucy Burns summed up the case for the Suffragists as follows:
I wish to state first—she said—as the others have stated, that we
proceeded quietly down the street opposite the White House with our
banners; that we intended to keep marching; that our progress was
halted by the police, not the crowd. There was no interference on
the part of the crowd until after the police had arrested us and
turned their backs on the crowd. Our contention is as others have
stated that the presence of the crowd there was caused by the action
of the police and the previous announcement of the police that they
would arrest the pickets, and not by our action which was entirely
legal.
In the second place I wish to call your attention to the fact that
there is no law whatever against our carrying banners through the
streets of Washington, or in front of the White House. It has been
stated that we were directed by the police not to carry banners
before the White House, not to picket at the White House. That is
absolutely untrue. We have received only one instruction from the
chief of police and that was delivered by Major Pullman in person.
He said that we must not carry banners outside of Headquarters. We
have had no other communication on this subject since that time.
We, of course, realized that that was an extraordinary direction,
because I don’t think it was ever told an organization that it could
not propagate its views, and we proceeded naturally to assume that
Major Pullman would not carry out that order in action because he
would not be able to sustain it in any just court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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