We are strong

[piplover]

Sometimes it's easy to forget that less than a hundred years ago, women didn't have the right to vote.  We couldn't wear trousers, or go to most universities.   Those who did go against the norm were considered radicals, and suffered not only ridicule, but torture and death.  Therefore, in honor of these women, I leave you all these real life heroes.  

This is the story of women who were ground-breakers. These brave women from the early 1900s made all the difference in the lives we live today.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but when, in North America , women picketed in front of the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote, they were jailed.


And by the end of the first night in jail, those women were barely alive.
Forty  prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing
went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of
'obstructing sidewalk  traffic.'


(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above
her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping
for air.

(Dora  Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed  her
head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate,
Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging,
beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the  women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15,  1917,
when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his
guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because
they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right
to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited.
She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.



Comments

[gayalondiel.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, how horrible. I knew how the suffragettes were treated in the UK, but I hadn't made a study of the rest of the world. How brave they were.

[primsong.livejournal.com]

I remember when I first read of the treatment those women went through, it made me feel unworthy to be reaping the benefits of their work without appreciation all those years. Thank heavens they didn't have a press that was in the pocket of those doing the torturing.

[shirebound]

Thank you, Pip. It's important that we don't forget.

[piplover.livejournal.com]

It amazes me how threatened men were by the notion of women having equal rights. And those women, knowing what could befall them, still struggled. It humbles me.

[piplover.livejournal.com]

I know! It always breaks my heart a little when I see these posts on the Sherlock Holmes coms about whether women would get in trouble if they were pregnant before they were married or if it was a big deal for them to wear trousers.

On the one hand, I'm happy that so many women have not been oppressed in such a fashion, but on the other... It seems all these women went through has been forgotten, and we can't let that happen!

It's very humbling when studying this, and makes me all the more appreciative for the freedoms I do have.

[piplover.livejournal.com]

*Hugs*

It is. And it saddens me when I see these young girls with no clue of how far women have come in so short a time.

[ansostuff.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reminding us!