1917 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

A race riot at East St. Louis, Illinois, July 2 leaves at least 40 dead and hundreds injured; the mob drives 6,000 blacks from their homes. New York blacks led by W. E. B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP walk in silence 15,000 strong down Fifth Avenue to protest the violence at East St. Louis (see 1910; 1948).

The Third Battalion of the black Twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry travels by train with seven white officers July 27 from its regimental encampment at Columbus, N.M., to Houston with orders to guard a construction site on the outskirts of town, where military installations are to be built at Camp Logan and Ellington Field. The contingent encounters racial discrimination when the men receive passes to go into Houston, police and other public officials regard them as a threat to racial harmony, the troops resent epithets voiced by white construction workers, they take umbrage at having to stand at the rear of city streetcars when they can see vacant seats in the "white" sections, and a riot erupts August 23 when two city police officers arrest a black infantryman for interfering with their arrest of a black woman. A mutinous sergeant leads 100 armed companions on a 2-hour march into the city, they open fire and kill 15 whites who include four policemen, 12 more are seriously wounded and one (another policeman) later dies, the sergeant advises his men to slip back into camp under cover of darkness and then shoots himself in the head. Civil authorities impose a curfew on Houston, and the army sends the battalion back to Columbus, N.M. by train. Military tribunals will indict 118 enlisted men on charges of mutiny and riot, 110 will be found guilty, 19 hanged, 63 given life sentences in federal prison. No white civilians will be brought to trial.

Russian women observe the seventh International Women's Day February 23 (March 8 in Western calendars) by demonstrating against the excesses of the czarist government. Women now make up half the nation's labor force (up from one third before the war). Russian women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Norway, 1913; Canada, 1918).

Federal authorities at New Orleans respond to America's entrance into the war by shutting down Storyville, whose brothels now have fewer than 700 prostitutes (see 1900).

"We want the vote so that we may serve our country better," says Emmeline Pankhurst April 23 in a speech at the Queen's Hall. "We want the vote so that we shall be more faithful and more true to our allies. We want the vote so that we may help to maintain the cause of Christian civilization for which we entered this war. We want the vote so that in the future such wars if possible may be averted."

The first U.S. woman governor takes office in Texas. Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson (née Wallace), 42, fills the vacancy left by her husband, James, who has been impeached and removed from office (see 1924).

Lawyer-suffragist Belva Lockwood dies at Washington, D.C., May 19 at age 86.

The Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario grant women voting rights (see 1916). A Wartime Elections Act enfranchises Canadian women with close relatives in the armed services, and a Military Voters Act gives the vote to women who are themselves in active service (see 1918). Most Canadian provinces will enact equal guardianship laws in the next 6 years, giving mothers rights equal to those of fathers with regard to custody, control, and education of children. Divorce laws will be made less discriminatory, although property settlements will not recognize a housewife's contribution to a family's assets.

The National Woman's Party pickets the White House in October to urge presidential support of the woman suffrage amendment (see 1916). Demonstrators who include Alice Paul and 265 others are arrested and sentenced to 7 months' imprisonment in the filthy Occuquan Workhouse, where most will serve 60 days. Paul is placed in solitary confinement in the psychiatric ward in an effort to discredit her, and force-fed when she goes on a 3-week hunger strike.

President Wilson endorses equal suffrage October 25 when he speaks at the White House before a group from the New York State Woman Suffrage Party; 20,000 women march in a New York suffrage parade October 27.

New York adopts a constitutional amendment November 6 that makes it the first state to grant equal voting rights to women (see 1918).