Public Demonstrations to Achieve Civic Goals:
Picketing at the White House.
I. Introduction: This lesson will introduce ideas about public demonstrations to advocate for social
goals. In the first half of the lesson, we will decode historical photographs to figure out the who, what,
where, when and why of a particular demonstration to the extent possible. The second half of the lesson
will focus on how Alice Paul and early 20th century suffragists used public demonstrations to agitate for
women’s suffrage and what happened to them as a result.
II. Guiding questions:
1. Why do people use public demonstrations to advance a point of view?
2. What can the study of historical demonstrations teach us about issues of today?
3. What rights did women have at the time Alice Paul and the Silent Sentinels began picketing at
the White House?
III. Learning objectives:
1. To learn about the use of public demonstrations to advance a particular cause or issue.
2. To learn to examine historical photographs of public protests and decode them to discern
information including:
a. The nature of the protest or issue;
b. The time period;
c. The point of view of the participants;
d. The general identity of the participants, e.g., men, women, racial identify, social class,
employment;
e. Whether the protest was legal or illegal.
3. To apply the skills of decoding historical photographs to learn the story of Alice Paul and early
20th century suffragists picketing at the White House in support of women’s suffrage.
IV. Lesson Activities:
1. Opening discussion:
a. Ask students if they have ever heard of or participated in a public demonstration to
achieve a civic goal or protest something.
b. What are examples of types of public demonstrations? (picketing, marches, protests at a
certain place, sit-ins, occupations)
c. What marks activity as this type of public demonstration? (signs, communication with
passersby, intent to communicate a message)
d. Ask the students to consider what makes a public demonstration or action legal or illegal.
2. Class Activity #1:
a. Divide into groups of three or four students;
b. Give each group one of the photos of a public demonstration (see attached seven photos
in Appendix A).
a. Instruct the students to work together to decode the photo:
i. What can you learn from the photo?
1 ii. Time period?
iii. Civic issue?
iv. Point of view of the participants?
v. Legal or illegal?
vi. Who were the participants?
b. Each group briefly report back to the whole class on their conclusions drawn from the
photo.
3. Class Activity #2.
a. Focus as a whole group on one photo: Suffragists at the White House, 19171
b. Discuss together what can be learned from this photo?
i.
Time period?
ii.
Civic issue?
iii.
Point of view of the participants?
iv. Legal or illegal?
v.
Who were the participants?
c. Discuss how in January 1917, women’s rights activist Alice Paul and her fellow
suffragists took their campaign for women’s suffrage to the gates of the White House.
They were the first political protestors to do so and their daily presence outside the White
House caused quite a stir.
1 http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/jazz/jb_jazz_sufarrst_1_e.html
2 d. Paul and her “Silent Sentinels” maintained an almost constant vigil for 18 months in front
of the White House.
e. Unlike other organizations, Paul specifically declined to reduce her public political agitation for suffrage on account of the U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917. i. What can you tell from this photo about their tone?
3 ii. Can you predict the public response to this tone at a time the U.S. was entering a war?
4 f. In late June 1917, six women protesters were arrested. Eleven more were detained on July
4. Ten days later, a third group was taken into custody. All the women were charged with
"obstructing traffic." The protesters were sentenced to 60 days in the workhouse. There,
they suffered beatings, forced feeding, and unsanitary conditions. But the pickets - and
the arrests - continued.
i. Were these arrests legal?
ii. Who do you think ordered these arrests?
iii. Would these women have been arrested today in the same circumstances?
Cell at Occuquan Workhouse 2
2 http://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000236 3 http://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000252 Vida Milholland in jail cell 3
5 g. After this “Kaiser Wilson” banner was unfurled on August 14, 1917, an angry mob of government workers and sailors responded by assaulting the picketers. Police did not intervene. i. What do you think of this poster? ii. What is the reference to “Kaiser Wilson”? iii. Is this inappropriate when the U.S. is at war? 6 h. On November 15, 1917, suffragists in prison at the Occoquan Workhouse endured what was later called the Night of Terror. Under orders from W. H. Whittaker, superintendent of the Occoquan Workhouse, as many as forty guards with clubs went on a rampage, brutalizing thirty-­‐three jailed suffragists. i. They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, and left her there for the night. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed, and knocked her out cold. j. Finally, in jail, Paul and others decided to implement a strategy Paul had learned in England – the hunger strike -­‐ refusing to eat as a protest of their detention. k. Prison officials responded by force-­‐feeding the hunger strikers with forcibly inserted nasal tubes. Paul herself was held in solitary confinement and even placed in a psychiatric ward. 7 Dora Lewis, of Philadelphia, released from jail after five days of hunger strike. l. Alice Paul’s organization, The National Women’s Party, was able to turn the barbaric treatment of Paul and the other jailed suffragists into sympathy for their cause and embarrassment for President Wilson. m. Responding to public pressure, finally, Wilson announced his support for the federal suffrage amendment. n. With his support, Congress passed the amendment in June 1919 and it was ratified by the states and signed into law on August 26, 1920. 8 Additional Classroom Activity In a second classroom hour, students and teachers or program leaders may watch clips from the movie, Iron Jawed Angels which tells the story of Alice Paul and the fight for women’s suffrage from 1913 to 1917. The following clips are available on YouTube: • The suffrage parade on March 3, 1913 where mob roughs up the marchers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fXpob-­‐C5po; • Women continue to picket even after Wilson and the Congress enter the war against Germany; passers-­‐by start a ruckus and the women are arrested and convicted of “obstructing traffic.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZwoEn5bNug • The night of terror at Occoquan; Alice pickets at the White House and reads quotes from President Wilson about freedom; a group of sailors start a riot and she gets arrested. First they put her in solitary where she refuses to eat. Then they put her in the mental ward. She explains herself eloquently to the prison psychiatrist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx9iSnmdTZA • Silent Sentinels are in prison where Alice declares a hunger strike; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO70ZjZ0wrw. [Caution – the force feeding imagery is very graphic and disturbing.] Longer clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HAjqFJTz8w After watching the clips, discuss together or in small groups: (1) Why would someone be willing to subject themselves to this brutality; (2) How would the students decide that each of them would be willing to do this; (3) Are there any issues that the students themselves feel is worth this type of personal harm; and (4) What other instances are there in which individuals subject themselves to this kind of personal physical sacrifice in support of a cause or political effort. 9 1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Questions for further thought The 19th Amendment enfranchised 20 million Americans. Yet the leaders of this effort, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others, usually only get a sidebar or footnote in history books. Why? What is the connection between the failure to tell the stories of women in American history and today’s gaps in gender equity in corporate and political leadership and issues of pay equity? Many suffragists were also ardent abolitionists. Why weren’t women included in the 15th Amendment that enfranchised Black men? Why did it take so long for women to get the vote even after the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870? What are the similarities and differences between the fight for women’s suffrage from 1915 to 1917 and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s? What is the difference between the 19th Amendment and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, which has never been ratified (even though it passed both houses of Congress in 1972)? How have the strategies used by Alice Paul and the Silent Sentinels been used since then in other campaigns? 10 Vocabulary and Important Terms 1. Suffrage -­‐ the right to vote. 2. Suffragist – the name given to a woman who advocated for women’s suffrage in the United States. 3. Civil disobedience – the active refusal to comply with certain laws, rules or orders of government or governmental authority because the law, rule or order is believed to be unfair or wrongly enforced. 4. Hunger strike – a form of non-­‐violent resistance in which participants refuse food as an act of political protest. 5. Force feeding – the practice of feeding a person against their will, for example, through a tube inserted in the nose or mouth 6. First Amendment – First amendment in the Bill of Rights, providing that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 7. 15th Amendment – Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the states or federal government from denying a citizen the right to based on that citizen's " race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Ratified in 1870 8. 19th Amendment – Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Adopted in August 1920. 9. Abolition -­‐ Putting an end to something by law, in this context, the ending of slavery in the United States. 10. Civil rights -­‐ The rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination. 11. Sit-­‐in – A strategy in which protestors seat themselves at a strategic location and by their presence and refusal to move, demonstrate their support for a particular social or political position. Sit-­‐ins were used very effectively in the Civil Rights and anti-­‐war movements in the 1960s. 11