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
The women of the fourth group were: Mrs. Charles W. Barnes, Kate
Stafford, Mrs. J. H. Short, Mrs. A. N. Beim, Catherine Martinette.
The women of the fifth group were: Mrs. Harvey Wiley, Alice Cosu, Mary
Bartlett Dixon, Julia Emory, Mary A. Nolan, Lucy Burns.
The forty-one women were tried on November 12. They were charged with
“obstructing traffic,” and pleaded “Not Guilty.” The police sergeants
and plain-clothes men gave their testimony which was refuted absolutely
by witnesses for the defendants—Helena Hill Weed, Olivia Dunbar
Torrence, Marie Manning Gasch, Mary Ingham.
Mrs. John Winters Brannan said:
The responsibility for an agitation like ours against injustice
rests with those who deny justice, not those who demand it. Whatever
may be the verdict of this Court, we shall continue our agitation
until the grievance of American women is redressed.
Mrs. Harvey Wiley said:
I want to state that we took this action with great consecration of
spirit. We took this action with willingness to sacrifice our
personal liberty in order to focus the attention of the nation on
the injustice of our disfranchisement, that we might thereby win
political liberty for all the women of the country. The Constitution
says that Congress shall not in any way abridge the right of
citizens peacefully to assembly and petition. That is exactly what
we did. We peacefully assembled and then proceeded with our petition
to the President for the redress of our grievance of
disfranchisement. The Constitution does not specify the form of
petition. Ours was in the form of a banner. To say that we “broke
traffic regulations” when we exercised our constitutional right of
petition is therefore unconstitutional.
Judge Mullowny admitted the embarrassment of the Administration.
“The trouble of the situation is that the Court has not been given power
to meet it,” he complained. “It is very, very puzzling.”
A little after three o’clock, he dismissed the pickets without imposing
sentence. He said he would take the case under advisement.
* * * * *
An hour later, twenty-seven of the women who had just been tried—with,
in addition, Mrs. William L. Colt, Elizabeth Smith, Matilda Young, Hilda
Blumberg—emerged from Headquarters. They walked twice up and down in
front of the White House before they took their places at the gates.
The police were dumbfounded by their unexpected onslaught. There were no
patrols waiting. But they pulled themselves together, arrested the
pickets, and commandeered cars in which to take them to the police
headquarters.
The thirty-one women were ordered to appear in court on November 14.
There, after waiting all the morning, Judge Mullowny told them to come
back Friday.
At Headquarters, it was believed that this was not only a challenge to
the quality of their spirit, but to the degree of their patience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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