Sepia Saturday: National Women's Party and Alice Paul
Do you know about Alice Paul? Alice was a suffragist and, with Lucy Burns, a co-founder in 1916 of the National Women's Party. The National Women's Party focused on achieving the right to vote for women via a federal constitutional amendment. They picketed for women's rights in front of the White House and were especially critical of President Woodrow Wilson. Their picketing was tolerated initially, but after the US declaration of war in World War One (which the NWP opposed), women picketers were arrested for "obstructing traffic." They were jailed under frightful conditions at Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. Many jailed suffragists went on hunger strikes to protest their treatment. Some, including Alice Paul and Lucy Burns (pictured below), were force-fed by jail personnel through hoses forced down their throats or tied to iron bars to limit their movement. The resulting scandal and its effect on the U.S.'s image at a time when Woodrow Wils...