the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
A prominent Washington educator, she chose
to demonstrate her solidarity by marching in
the procession with Delta Sigma Theta, a newly
formed African-American sorority from Howard
University. One hundred years later, in 2013, the
influential organization staged an anniversary
suffrage march. This time sorority members
led the procession.
AT THE TIME of the original parade in March
1913, nine states, all in the West, had passed laws
allowing for the enfranchisement of women.
Several more, including Illinois, were on the
brink of doing so. Elected officials now had
women as their constituents, women they had
to answer to. The time was ripe to push for an
amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But President Wilson did not show much
inclination to support women’s right to vote.
After Wilson was reelected in 1916, Paul rat-
cheted up the pressure, recruiting activists,
including Terrell and her daughter Phyllis,
to stand silently in front of the White House,
many holding signs that read “Mr. President
what will you do for woman suffrage?” and
“How long must women wait for liberty?” These
picketers—known as the Silent Sentinels—
were treated with curiosity at first; no one had
ever protested the president like that.
Things took a more violent turn once the
United States entered World War I in April 1917.
Dissent was seen as disloyal, and people ripped
the banners from the protesters’ hands and spit
on them. At one point a mob chased them to
the nearby headquarters of the National Wom-
en’s Party, where the crowd tried to pull women
from the balcony.
Rather than protecting the protesters, police
arrested them for blocking traffic or, in the case
of Alice Paul, just for walking toward the demon-
stration. Most of the women were jailed at the
Occoquan Workhouse prison in Lorton, Virginia,
but Paul was put in solitary confinement at the
D.C. jail, where she went on a hunger strike for
three weeks. She was tied down and force-fed by
a tube thrust up her nose. “I confess I was afraid
of Dr. Gannon, the jail physician,” she said later.
“I dreaded the hour of his visit.”
Conditions were no better at Occoquan. Some
15 women went on hunger strikes, and a few of
them were force-fed. “Food dumped directly
into stomach feels like a ball of lead,” said Lucy
Burns, who led the imprisoned women. On what
became known as “the Night of Terror,” Burns
was handcuffed to her cell door overnight, while
other suffragists were thrown against iron fur-
niture. One woman had a heart attack and was
refused medical care.BY LATE NOVEMBER 1917, news of this brutal
treatment began to shift public opinion in the
women’s favor. They were released from jail;
soon all charges were dropped, and the Senate
and the House took up the proposed amend-
ment. Even Wilson started to thaw (two of his
daughters supported the suffragists).
None of the 12 states fully
enfranchising women by then
were in the South. Yet ratifying
the amendment would require
support from at least some of
the southern states, where white
supremacy ruled and black men
had been effectively disenfran-
chised by local regulations. The
language of the 19th Amend-
ment echoed that of the 15th:
“The right of the citizens of
the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of sex.”
It did not guarantee anyone’s right to vote, and
Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segrega-
tion, had proved that there were other ways to
block access to the ballot box. “Everyone knows
that the same impediments that are keep-
ing black men from polls—poll taxes, literacy
tests, understanding clauses, white primaries,BY LATE NOVEMBER 1917, REPORTS
OF BRUTALITY AGAINST WOMEN
PROTESTERS BEGAN TO SHIFT PUBLICOPINION IN THE WOMEN’S FAVOR.
120 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC