As the United States entered the twentieth century, suffragists were disappointed with the complete lack of progress on women's suffrage. Presidents were largely indifferent to the issue: neither Theodore Roosevelt nor Woodrow Wilson believed it to be a priority. Those presidents chose to work on other progressive causes, rather than women's suffrage.
Emma Goldman, an international anarchist, pointed out that women in both New Zealand (1893) and Australia (1902) could vote. Why were American women denied that right?
Alice Paul (1885–1977) and Lucy Burns (1879–1966) convinced the suffragists to use civil disobedience to achieve their goal. The well-educated women were determined and uncompromising. Paul was imprisoned in both England and America on numerous occasions, and she led rallies and demonstrations. Burns, who edited The Suffragist , also spent time in prison. On one occasion, Burns was jailed for writing suffragist messages on the sidewalks of Washington, DC. When Woodrow Wilson...
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was inaugurated in 1913, five thousand suffragists were there to protest.
In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment finally gave women the right to vote.
The suffragists in the early part of the twentieth century, especially in England, pioneered techniques of civil disobedience to get attention for their cause and to pressure the government to respond to their demand for the vote.
The suffragists were in a bind when it came to obtaining a vote in a democratic country. Legislators (the people who make the laws) are responsive to voters. Women had no vote, so legislators had no reason to be responsive to them. It was the classic Catch-22 situation: because the women had no vote, they couldn't get the vote.
Therefore, the women had to turn to other tactics, after pleading with legislators repeatedly led to disappointment. The suffragists, for instance, took to the streets to march and to protest, often wearing white as a symbol of their movement. Then they decided to disrupt business by using targeted tactics that destroyed property but were nonviolent toward human beings. They broke shop windows and poured blood into mailboxes to destroy mail. When they were arrested, they staged hunger strikes in prisons. Publicity about the barbarism of forced feedings discredited the prison system and added to the pressure for change.
The suffragists eventually became a force that nobody could ignore. As George Dangerfield argues in his book The Strange Death of Liberal England, they were part of intense pressure on a dying system of governance that was only saved, in his opinion, by World War I.
Women's suffrage, the right to vote, is an example of how effective civil disobedience is when attempting to change social norms. Prominent figures in the suffrage movement include Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and Lucy Stone. Each aided the movement through civil disobedience, although Alice Paul is noted for being the most militant of the mentioned group.
The suffrage movement used civil disobedience to gain popularity. Force was not a measure to be used because the leaders felt force demonstrations would be ended by men quickly and only endanger their cause to women who still viewed voting as a man's responsibility. Demonstrations included parades, billboards, and picketing. In 1917, the White House was picketed leading to the arrest of several members of the National Women's Party (NWP). Their disobedience continued in jail where they went on a hunger strike. Force feedings by correctional officers shocked the nation and brought more attention to the cause than any demonstration of force may have provided. Other forms of civil disobedience had included voting before they had a legal right, mass mailings to elected officials and large gatherings without a permit. The tactics were simple and effective because any retaliation would only aid their cause.