“Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” — Inez Milholland, 1916.
As we previously discussed, suffragists argued women should qualify as “persons and citizens of the United States” under the 14th Amendment. Then, some suffragists argued against the 15th Amendment to enfranchise Black men, declaring educated white women were more entitled to the right.
After these failures, the suffrage fight proceeded state by state, at a snail’s pace: 15 states from 1890 to 1918.
It took a new generation of activists to take the fight national. Enter the period known as The Great Demand, 1910 to 1920, when Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others organized The National Woman’s Party. They used non-violent protests to attract headlines and change the tone of decades of negative propaganda in the press.
A Women’s March scheduled for the day before Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 inauguration became the largest march in Washington, D.C., since Coxey’s Army protested in 1894.
The women were spat upon, tripped in the muddy streets and had objects thrown at them. Over 100 women were hospitalized with injuries, as men poured into the street from hotels and bars and refused to allow the parade to proceed from the Capitol to the White House.
Wilson was forced to share national headlines with the suffragists. Women had come from all across the country for the march and were encouraged to go home and describe their experiences in letters to their local newspapers. More press sympathy resulted.
Beginning in January 1917, suffragists became the first ever to picket the White House. Women traveled from all over the country to maintain daily peaceful demonstrations. Large signs — often calling out the hypocrisy of defending democracy abroad while women were disenfranchised at home — provided photographic fodder for the press.
In June, D.C. police started arresting picketers. The women proclaimed themselves political prisoners and started hunger strikes while jailed.
That November, on what became known as the Night of Terror, the superintendent of the Occuquan
(Virginia) Workhouse unleashed guards to beat and inflict other physical punishment on the women; one died. As word spread about the horrific treatment, public sentiment shifted in the suffragists’ favor. Later, the courts ruled the women had been illegally arrested, convicted and imprisoned.
Finally, in September 1918, facing backlash for his administration’s treatment of suffragists, Wilson encouraged Congress to consider the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote. The amendment passed Congress June 4, 1919, and was ratified by the required 36th state on Aug. 18, 1920.
However, ratification of the 19th Amendment did not end the fight for equal rights.
Many women still could not vote. Black women faced the same discriminatory barriers to voting as Black men. Native Americans, first-generation Asian-Americans and citizens of Puerto Rico couldn’t vote, because they were not legally citizens of the U.S. Specific omissions were addressed by laws enacted 1924 to 1965, but the voting rights struggle continues today.
Our Constitution still lacks an Equal Rights Amendment, which was first introduced to Congress in 1923, passed by the House in 1971 and the Senate in 1972, but never ratified by enough states.
Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the pay gap between women and men was 60 cents to $1 in the 1970s. Now, in 2024, the wage gap remains 84 cents to $1 for the same job.
We saw some progress in the 1970s: Before 1974, a woman couldn’t have a credit card or loan without a husband’s signature. Before 1979, a pregnant woman lacked protections under law from workplace demotion, pay reduction or dismissal.
Then, progress stalled. Until July, pregnant women lacked full protections under law from discipline or discharge for needing extra bathroom, hydration or snack breaks. In 2022, the national right to abortion was terminated, with other reproductive rights still at risk.
Abigail Adams made her plea to “remember the ladies” almost 250 years ago. Today, full equality under law remains elusive.
