2014/03/01 by Julia L. Mickenberg · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Economic history #Gender studies #Historical Gender and Feminism Studies #History #Political science #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1093/jahist/jau004
openalex publication_date 2014/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
On June 20, 1917, two months after the United States entered World War I, Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis of the militant suffrage organization, the National Woman's party (nwp), stood in front of the White House holding a banner welcoming representatives of Russia's new, provisional government to the United States. (See figure 1.) It read: To the Envoys of Russia: President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. They say “We are a democracy. Help us win a world war, so that democracies may survive.” We, the women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million American Women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement. Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally.1 Members of the nwp had been peacefully picketing the White House for months, with Wilson and others treating them as little more than an annoyance. But the “Russian banner” drew an angry crowd. Two men ripped the banner down while Burns and Lewis stood “like martyrs,” gripping its supports. Burns returned the following day with another nwp member, Katharine Morey, and an identical banner. This too was destroyed, as onlookers called the picketers “traitors” and “a disgrace to womanhood.” In the days that followed, several nwp picketers were arrested, tried, and imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia—choosing imprisonment over paying a 25 fine—becoming the first Americans “to be incarcerated for advocating women's rights.”2