Suffering For Suffrage

BIKINI KILL: [SINGING] Rebel girl, rebel girl, rebel girl, you are the queen of my world. Rebel girl, rebel girl–

BRIAN: We’re going to turn now to a more conventional political struggle, the right to vote.

PETER: In 1848, the historic women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls included suffrage in its declaration of rights. But progress on that front was slow. By the early 20th century, only a handful of states had actually granted women suffrage. A Federal constitutional amendment granting all women the vote seemed out of reach.

BRIAN: In 1912, a splinter group of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, or NAWSA, decided to push for suffrage on a national level instead of state by state. The leader of that group was Alice Paul, a suffragist trained in so-called militant tactics such as hunger strikes.

In 1913, Paul organized a parade. That might not seem like an extreme measure now, but it was at the time. Respectable white middle-class American women simply did not march in the street. But Alice Paul wanted to shake things up. And she wanted to be seen.

JILL ZAHNISER: She convinced NAWSA leaders to allow her to organize a parade on the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

BRIAN: This is Alice Paul biographer Jill Zahniser.

JILL ZAHNISER: There would be many, many people in Washington already for the inaugural festivities. So the nation’s eyes would be on Washington D.C. at this time.

BRIAN: Paul fought to secure a permit to march down America’s corridor of power, Pennsylvania Avenue, which connected the capitol and the White House. On March 3, 1913, after months of strenuous effort in the face of opposition, 5,000 women gathered for the peaceful march. But it didn’t stay peaceful for long. Zahniser provides this snapshot of the day’s drama, with testimony from suffragists in attendance.

JILL ZAHNISER: They were very conscious of providing a spectacle. So this parade started off with women on horseback and the woman Inez Milholland, known as the most beautiful suffragist.

MALE SPEAKER: Washington Post, March 3, 1913, “the arrival of Miss Milholland, the beautiful society girl of New York, gave complete support to the claim of the suffragists that some of the most beautiful women in the country are active in equal rights cause.”

JILL ZAHNISER: She led off the parade with the other horsewomen, draped in a blue cloak, wearing a kind of a helmet that was gold, on a white charger. Shades of Joan of Arc here, who was very much a hero for many suffragists.

So it started off with horses and Inez Milholland. There were seven sections of the parade. And each section was designed to have different costumes. And then the floats came to provide color and spectacle during the parade.

MALE SPEAKER: “A kaleidoscopic picture of ever-shifting color, beautiful women posing in classic robes passed in a bewildering array, presenting an irresistible appeal to the artistic and completely captivating the 100,000 spectators, who struggled for a view along the entire route,” Washington Post, March 4.

JILL ZAHNISER: The parade started on the grounds of the US capitol. And even as they were getting organized, it became apparent that the police protection was already breaking down.

MALE SPEAKER: “Although short wire ropes had been stretched up and down the length of Pennsylvania Avenue, the enormous crowds that gathered early to obtain points of vantage overstepped them or crawled beneath, with the result that when the parade started, it faced at almost every 100 yards, a solid wall of humanity,” Washington Post, March 4.

JILL ZAHNISER: And they went a few blocks. And then it became clear that it was going to be very difficult to go on further, because the police were not successfully holding back thousands and thousands of spectators, many of whom were there for the inaugural festivities for the week.

FEMALE SPEAKER: “I said to a policeman, a tremendous big man who could have moved almost any kind of crowd, officer, there are nearly 2,000 women in back of us walking five abreast. And you can push these lines back. He deliberately folded his arms and said, I cannot do nothing with this crowd. And I ain’t going to try. And he began to pick his teeth.

The crowd laughed when he made this reply to me. And I looked straight ahead. I thought the only thing to do was to march on.”

JILL ZAHNISER: And women began to hear insults. Some of the male spectators began to touch them, to push against them, to shout at them, tell them to go back home. What were they doing there?

FEMALE SPEAKER: “This woman put her hand out and brushed back this drunken German man. And as she did, he had some tobacco juice in his mouth. And he spat it right on her forehead. And it ran down her face. I asked the policeman would he not please protect this woman. And he said, there would be nothing like this happen if you would stay at home.”

JILL ZAHNISER: So some women were just frightened out of their minds. Other women marching were energized really, feeling that they had a right to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, protesting for their rights, demanding their rights. There’s a great quote from one woman who told the other women to get out there hat pins and to use those as weapons against anyone who approached them too closely.

FEMALE SPEAKER: “Another man broke into the parade and almost tore a girl’s coat from her back. I heard him make a very ugly remark to a woman in front of me. He prepared to say something to me. But as he opened his mouth, my baton accidentally struck him in the mouth. I think his teeth went down because he gulped a great deal. I haven’t yet heard what he was going to say.”

JILL ZAHNISER: And that was the moment when the women leading the parade realized that everything really was falling apart in front of them. And then the cavalry was called.

MALE SPEAKER: “In two lines, the troops charged the crowds. Evidently realizing they would be ridden down, the mobs fought their way back. When they hesitated, the cavalry men drove their horses into the throngs and whirled and wheeled until hooting men and women were forced to retreat,” Los Angeles Times.

“In the short stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue between 11th and 15th Streets, more than 30 women and girls were taken out of the press to the emergency hospital in a fainting condition in less than an hour,” Chicago Daily Tribune.

JILL ZAHNISER: Some of the people who participated in the parade, who happened to be congressman, began to call for a Congressional investigation. A hearing was held in which spectators and some of the women marching in the parade could tell their stories.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ironically, this became an enormous opportunity to put suffrage, women’s suffrage, on the front page for days, and days, and days, nearly for a month, because of the hearing. So what might have been a disaster turned into a great opportunity.

It put women’s suffrage back on the map. There had been really not a whole lot happening before 1910. But the national splash of the 1913 parade, that really reinvigorated the suffrage movement. From almost nothing happening for a Federal amendment, a Federal amendment to the Constitution was achieved in 1920.

So 1913, and the introduction of Alice Paul into the movement with the 1913 parade, is really the beginning of the end.

PETER: Jill Zahniser is the author of Alice Paul, Claiming Power.

[MUSIC – DAVID BOWIE, “SUFFRAGETTE CITY”]

DAVID BOWIE: [SINGING] Hey, man, aw leave me alone. You know– hey, man– well she’s a total blam-blam. She said she had to squeeze it but she– and then she– aw don’t lean on me, man, cause you can’t afford the ticket back from Suffragette City. Oh, don’t lean on me, man, cause you–