The sentinels had been in position for only 40 minutes when Woodrow Wilson’s car returned to the White House. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE?” and “HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?” ( For Black women, the fight to vote would continue even after the 19th Amendment.) They arrived outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and took their positions, standing silently and holding their signs, which begged for answers to tired questions: “MR. The group marched to the White House in single file while Paul stayed behind to manage the protest from headquarters. As they braced for the bitter January chill, they were fortified with Paul’s advice: Don’t be provoked into a physical or verbal confrontation, don’t make eye contact with angry bystanders, stay quiet, and keep your backs to the gate for safety and to make sure the public can read the signs. On January 10, 1917, a dozen or so suffragists bundled themselves into wool coats, hats, and gloves and draped purple, white, and gold sashes across their chests. About 100 people were injured while the police did little to quell the violence. In its opening moments, the march proceeded smoothly, but unruly crowds (made up mostly of men in town for the Inauguration) turned ugly: spitting upon the women, blocking and shoving them down. Wells-Barnett, activist Helen Keller, and journalist Nellie Bly. Continuing a fight begun more than 60 years before, this demonstration would be the first national event to unite efforts from all over the country, including such notable participants as journalist Ida B. One day prior to the start of Woodrow Wilson’s first term as president, thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C., to march for women’s right to vote. “Will you not,” she asked, “be a ‘silent sentinel’ of liberty and self-government?” In America pickets had become a common union tactic, and Blatch had used pickets in her Votes for Women campaign with the New York Legislature in 1912, so when she delivered her final plea to the women of Cameron House, they stirred. They listened as Blatch offered a new form of protest. We need to have a silent vigil in front of the White House until his inauguration in March.” There they would hear a plan, by Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.īlatch told them: “We have got to bring to the President, day by day, week in, week out, the idea that great numbers of women want to be free, will be free, and want to know what he is going to do about it. They met on January 9, 1917, at the new headquarters of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, Cameron House, located just steps from the White House. Wilson’s reelection felt like a major setback, but the suffragists, led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, decided to turn their grief into action. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īlmost four years had passed, and U.S.
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