S02 E20 DC & Virginia: Jailed For Freedom

In this episode, we talk about the final years leading up to the 19th Amendment passage in Washington D.C. and northern Virginia.

• Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were leaders of the militant wing of the suffrage fight in the U.S. and officially founded the National Woman’s Party in 1916.
• Inez Milholland was a suffragist and attorney who in 1916 campaigned in the western states with equal suffrage to ask women voters to support the disenfranchised women in the East. She collapsed during a speech in California and died one month later becoming a martyr for the movement.
• Mary Church Terrell was a prominent suffragist and a Silent Sentinel, who was the first President of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She spoke regularly at NAWSA conventions as well as international suffrage conferences.
• Phyllis Terrell Langston (Mary’s daughter) was also a Silent Sentinel who carried on her mother’s legacy in women’s suffrage and civil rights advocacy.

About our Guest:

Pat Wirth served as the CEO of the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association until 2021, when its mission to build the National Memorial in Lorton, Virginia, was completed. She now serves as the Coordinator for Docent-led tours of the memorial.

Links to People, Places, Publications:

Washington D.C. & the 19th Amendment (here)

Alice Paul Biographical Sketch (here)

Lucy Burns Biographical Sketch (here)

Inez Milholland Biographical Sketch (here)

National Woman’s Party overview (here)

Mary Church Terrell Biographical Sketch (here)

Phyllis Terrell Biographical Sketch (here)

Visit the Mary Church Terrell historical marker (here)

Doris Stevens Biographical Sketch (here) 

Visit the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial (here)

Alva Belmont Biographical Sketch (here)

Visit the Belmont-Paul Equality National Monument (here)

CM Marihugh is a public history consultant and currently conducting independent research for a book on commemoration of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She has an M.A. in Public History from State University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Learn more about:

• National Votes for Women Trail (here)
• National Votes for Women Trail - William G. Pomeroy historical markers (here)
• National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (here)

Do you have a question, comment, or suggestion? Get in touch! Send an e-mail to NVWTpodcast@ncwhs.org

Transcript

CM Marihugh  00:00

Welcome to Her March to Democracy, where we're telling stories along The National Votes for Women Trail. I'm CM Marihugh, and this podcast chronicles the fight for voting rights for women. The suffragists were the revolutionaries of their day, and they battled the powers that be. These foot soldiers cut across the lines of geography, race, ethnicity, class and gender, and numbered in the many 1000s over 70 plus years.

Earth Mama  00:51

We are standing on the shoulders 

Of the ones who came before us. 

They are saints and they are humans. 

They are angels. They are friends. 

We can see beyond the struggles. 

And the troubles and the challenge.  

When we know that by our efforts, 

Things will be better in the end. 

CM Marihugh  01:02

Each episode is a tour along The Trail to the places of struggle, the states, the cities, the towns where wins and defeats happened over and over again. Our theme music is Standing On The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse recorded by Earth Mama. Join us on our travels to hear about these incredible activists in the stories along The National Votes for Women Trail. 

CM Marihugh  01:27

Today, we're going to Washington, DC and Virginia to hear stories about the women's suffrage movement along The National Votes for Women Trail. DC has 28 sites in the trail database, and Virginia has 83 sites. And most importantly, northeast Virginia has a national memorial honoring the suffrage movement, which we'll hear more about. In this episode. We're going to focus on incidents in DC and nearby Northern Virginia that occurred during the end of the 19th Amendment struggle, and go in depth on what happened then. I'd like to welcome Pat Wirth, who served as the CEO of The Turning Point Suffragists Memorial Association until 2021 when its mission to build The National Memorial in Lorton, Virginia, was completed, and she now serves as its coordinator for Docent-led tours. Welcome, Pat. Would you start by telling us how important the events that we're talking about today are to the story of the suffrage movement.

Pat Wirth  02:41

Well, I believe that the period in the early 1900s that we're going to cover today are the final chapter in the suffrage movement that results in President Woodrow Wilson going to Congress and requesting that they act on passing the 19th Amendment, and our conversation will primarily focus on two major suffrage leaders, Alice Paul. She was a highly educated Quaker from New Jersey, and Alice was one of these types of people that if she didn't know enough to suit her about a particular subject, she would go back to college and get another degree, and when she passed, she actually had six college degrees. And we're going to talk about Lucy Burns, who was a brilliant leader. She went to Vassar. She was a scholar from Brooklyn, New York. And we're going to talk about how they broke with the state by state moderate strategy of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, and we refer to that as NAWSA. And they established a new political party, the National Women's party, and it was viewed as a militant organization. And the National Women's party strategy exclusively was in favor of a national constitutional amendment.

CM Marihugh  04:08

You know, we've noted at different times in the podcast how the suffrage movement had a number of different organizations and strategies, both at the national level and the state level, but many who know even a little about the suffrage movement are probably still unaware that there was a militant wing and the critical role that it played before 1920 and Alice Paul and Lucy burns were the leaders of that Wing, so I'm so glad we're talking about them today. What site are we starting at?

Pat Wirth  04:46

Well, we're going to begin today in Washington, DC, in Lafayette Square. Lafayette Square is right across a park from the White House, and it plays a central role in the movement during this time. The National Women's party had its headquarters in different buildings on the square, and the first was in the historic Cameron house on the east side. And then in 1918 they moved to another building on Jackson place on the west side of the square. It's a beautiful square, and this was very convenient for what the women were about to do. 

Pat Wirth  05:24

Both of these women were very highly educated, and as was the case back during that period of time, they went to Europe to finish their education, and it turned out that they met each other in England, and they learned about what was happening with the suffrage movement at that time, and it was being run by a family of women. Their last name was Pankhurst. The mother was Emmeline, and she had two daughters, Sylvia and Christabel, and they decided that if they were going to get anything done in England, they had to make sure that people paid attention to them. So they got very involved in doing what was considered militant acts. They threw stones through windows, they set fires, they put bombs in mailboxes. I mean, it was pretty drastic, and Alice Paul and Lucy burns both got involved. It was called the women's social and political union. They met in 1909 at a London protest. They were both arrested, which is where they became friends, knowing that they were each Americans. 

Pat Wirth  06:32

Essentially during their period of time there, they became British-trained-activists. They took a very aggressive approach. They had open air meetings to reach men. They got up on their soap boxes. They tried to enter Parliament when it was in session. Some of them even chained themselves to a gate to try to get in to see the prime minister. And members of this organization were repeatedly arrested. They were jailed. They went on hunger strikes. And when women start going on hunger strikes, the powers that be really get concerned, because they're not looking for anybody to die and become a martyr. And so the press and public took notice of what these women were doing, both Alice and Lucy had been jailed. They were beaten. They were force fed. Alice actually was jailed nine different times in 1906 she was a rather frail woman. She was maybe about five foot two. Lucy, on the other hand, was very tall. She was an Irish woman, red hair, but they both took the punishment that was given to them. 

Pat Wirth  07:44

Alice returned to the United States in 1910 and Lucy returned in 1912 and they both joined the National American Women's Suffrage Association in New York City, where Lucy was from and to begin with, and they got involved with the organization. But having come from England and being super active and, you know, picketing and marching and that sort of thing, they really felt that NAWSA was a very, very conservative group, and they were kind of bored, and they were, you know, in their early 30s, and they just didn't feel like the movement in the United States was moving quickly enough. And so Alice and Lucy wanted- they had they originally, NAWSA had a committee called the congressional committee, and it kind of wasn't doing anything. And so Alice and Lucy asked them to re energize that committee, and they decided to do so. Alice was named the president of the committee, and Lucy was the vice president, and they asked if they could be transferred to DC, because what the purpose of the congressional committee was, it was just, it was really a singular purpose, which was to introduce the amendment to the Constitution every year. 

Pat Wirth  09:09

And so they figured that was easy enough that they could do that. And so they were, in fact, allowed to go to Washington, DC. So that's when they first came to town, and that was in 1912 and but they were very strong minded women. They were both great leaders and strategists, and they had no intention of following everything that NAWSA wanted them to do. So their very first order of business was to schedule the great suffrage parade, and this was Alice's timing on that was such that Woodrow Wilson had been elected to the presidency, and they decided to have this March be on March 3, 1913 in DC. That was the day before Woodrow Wilson's first inauguration. They wanted to send him a message. They wanted him to send the message that we want suffrage. And that's not exactly what NAWSA had intended for them to do when they were in DC. But nonetheless, they approved for them to have the march, and it turned out to be amazing. 

Pat Wirth  10:17

Now, there had been other suffrage marches in New York City and in Boston prior to that, but this is the first time there was ever such a woman's rights march in Washington DC. That parade was really one of the very first times that Alice and Lucy were able to show their organizational skills and accomplish a very major event in the suffrage movement, and then, after the parade, in the next few years, Alice and Lucy continued to ignore NASA's directives, and they weren't really on board with the focus that NASA had at that Time was getting vote for women, state by state, Alice and Lucy were focused on a national amendment, and they also took a position, and this was really irritating to the women in NASA, that they would hold the political party in power responsible for a federal suffrage amendment. So if Congress and the President were all Democrats, they were the ones that could, in fact, pass an amendment. They're the ones that could get it on the books. If it had been the Republicans or whomever the other political party in power was, they were going to hold them responsible. 

Pat Wirth  11:38

Well, NAWSA just felt that that was way too political for their liking. NAWSA threw them out in January of 1914. At that time, wealthy socialite Alva Belmont, who was a member of NAWSA, decided, as well as Lucy and Alice, that a national amendment was the way to go. And so she left NAWSA, and she began to back Alice and Lucy financially, and that was really important, because, as we all know, you can't do anything if you don't have any money. And one of the things that happened with NAWSA, and this was once Carrie Chapman Catt became its president, is one of their members passed away and left a huge inheritance for NAWSA. And so that was why NAWSA was able, during that period of time, to establish offices in every state and continue to try to work towards state by state, voting rights for women, because she had a lot of money. Alice did not have a lot of money. She was asking women to look at their coffee cans and to take out the dimes and nickels that they were saving and send them to her, because they can't run these organizations for free. 

Pat Wirth  12:49

And one of the things that they did was they began publishing a newsletter called The Suffragist in 1915 and that went out monthly, and they spread the word. And then by 1916 they formed the National Women's party, and that was before the presidential election that was coming up, and their motto was, "Forward out of darkness, forward into the light." Both the National Women's party and NASA actively were lobbying congressmen. When they were in DC and they were there for their meetings, they kept meticulous records, absolutely meticulous records, on the lives of these people, if they were married, what their family life was like, their personal preferences, idiosyncrasies, their voting records. You know, they knocked on doors, and they kept doing that. The National Women's Party decided that they were going to send, before the election, they were going to send organizers into the nine equal suffrage states in the West, and they did that because there were 4 million women voters that could cast a vote. 

Pat Wirth  14:00

And once again, let's hold the political party in power so we know that the Democrats aren't doing anything. And what they wanted to say is, you need to vote for the other party, because the Dems aren't doing anything to get us to vote. And Inez Milholland, a woman that rode on her horse in the parade in 1913 and her sister Vida did this very thing. Now she wasn't feeling particularly well, but Alice said this is absolutely important, and she really convinced her that she needed to go. And this is, this is a quote from what Inez said. "It is only for a little while, soon the fight will be over. Victory is in sight. It depends upon how we stand in this coming election, United or divided, whether we shall win and whether we shall deserve to win." And she was a phenomenal orator and when people heard she was coming, they would gather in huge crowds to listen to what she had to say. And her reputation preceded her, and it was a great reputation. 

Pat Wirth  15:10

She and her sister made it to Los Angeles, and she was speaking to a crowd on October 23 1916, and she collapsed while she was speaking, and the final words that she spoke from the podium were, Mr. President, How long must women wait for liberty? She was taken to a hospital, and about a month later, she died on November 25 from Pernicious anemia. She was only 30 years old. Without trying, she became the martyr of the suffrage movement. The National Women's party was devastated at this happening. As it turned out, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected. He basically won because he promised that he would keep us out of World War One. But a wake was held for Inez in Washington, DC, and it was held on Christmas Day, December 25 1916 in the Capitol in Statuary Hall. Was the first time that a woman ever was given that privilege. There were over 1000 people that came from across the country to be there for her wake. I mean, they just were incredulous that a woman of her acclaim, of her education, of what she had accomplished, had literally died for what they were fighting for.

CM Marihugh  16:38

That parade is always a remarkable story. It's also a reminder that racism often happened because of political expediency, which is no excuse for it, but often southern suffragists would say, Well, if you're going to have black women March, then we're not going to take part. And this was a time when everyone knew that there had to be a national movement. It's not an excuse, but that's one of the factors that came into this. I was searching historic newspapers for contemporary coverage of her death and her memorial at the US Capitol, and when I entered her name as a search term during the year 1916 there were over 7000 results, including newspapers from abroad. She was so well known and respected inside the movement, and obviously well beyond I even saw that the Washington Herald included her in their extensive list of prominent persons who died in 1916 she's one of those suffragists that played such an important and visible role. But her name has been largely forgotten, so I'm glad you talked in depth about becoming a martyr. Where are we going to next?

Pat Wirth  18:09

Next? We're going to go to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House. Alice did, in fact, contact the president and after the wake and she asked for a meeting, and it was granted. And Alice went with 300 of her National Women's Party members, and the meeting took place on January 9, 1917, and once again, they basically said, President Wilson, people are dying. You need to do something about this. And, you know, he basically said the same thing. There was nothing he could do. This was a state's responsibility. That was it. 

Pat Wirth  18:55

Well, there was definitely something that Alice could do. And as I mentioned, their headquarters was in Lafayette Park, right across from the White House. And so the very next day, on January 10, 1917 they began to picket the White House. They had contacted women from across the country, and over 1000 had signed up to take shifts. They were from colleges, they were professional women, they were immigrants, you name it. And there were women that were willing to picket. Well, what did that mean that they were picketing? Well, they would picket from Monday through Saturday, from 10 o'clock in the morning until six o'clock at night, and that was regardless of the extreme weather conditions. Now let's think about picketing in January, and it's cold and it's below freezing, and you know they're not wearing LL Bean boots, and you know they don't have, you know, down coats that they're wearing. And so one of the things that you. To happen was they would take bricks at the National Women party headquarters, and they would heat them in the oven, and they would bring them over so that the picketers could stand on them so their feet wouldn't freeze. They never, never did not picket. It did not matter what the weather was they would be there in rain, they would be there in the worst kinds of weather. And sometimes they even had pickets on Sunday because a lot of the immigrant women worked six days a week, but they still wanted to picket. And they would come on Sundays and pick it, because that was the only time that they could come that it was very, very important for them to be able to do that. 

Pat Wirth  20:42

Once again, Mary Church Terrell and her daughter, Phyllis, picketed. They were never acknowledged as much as some of the other women were. Mary had begun and was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She became very prominent in the entire suffrage movement, and these women became known as Silent Sentinels. And why was that? Well, they were quiet. They let their banners and signs state their positions. Well, as we all know, President Wilson did not keep us out of World War One, and NAWSA and Carrie Chapman Catt took a step backwards, and they said, well, they would not continue to fight for women's suffrage during such an important time while our country was at war. Well, the National Women's party said, no, no, no, no, wait a minute. We are sending our boys to Germany to fight for democracy. What about democracy for women in the United States? And they were not going to back down. They were not going to stop picketing during this time. 

Pat Wirth  21:48

The signs that they were using got nastier and nastier toward Woodrow Wilson. They, in fact, called him Kaiser Wilson, the fact that he would not discuss with them Amendment to the Constitution, and President Wilson got more than a little tired of this, so he directed that the DC police start arresting these peaceful protesters. And those arrests began on June 27 1917 the women were hauled off to the magistrates offices, and they were given a choice, they could pay a fine, or they could go to jail. During this period of time, in 1917 there were 97 women that were jailed for obstructing traffic, which was on the sidewalk. So there actually was no such ordinance, but that's what they were jailed for. And it turned out, and it was very surprising to the judges that many of the women said, I'm not paying a fine. I didn't break the law, I'll go to jail. Thank you very much, and it was very shocking that these women were so adamant about getting the vote that they were willing to go to jail.

CM Marihugh  23:03

This is the first time there was picketing at the White House. That's just incredible. Alice Paul was so determined and brave to start this, and also she was a marketing star, she knew this would get attention, and she knew how critical it was to get that visibility. I also found it gratifying, even though they eventually suffered attacks and violence, that there are stories of the passers by who encouraged them in their efforts, even a Civil War veteran I believe. Where are we going to next?

Pat Wirth  23:43

Well, we're going to jail. And there were actually DC had two prisons. They had a DC jail, and they also bought property in Virginia that was across the Potomac River, and built a prison there, and was called the Occoquan workhouse. And the idea of that prison was kind of unique. It was intended to allow prisoners to learn a trade so that when their sentences were done, they would be able to get jobs and stay out of trouble. 

Pat Wirth  24:16

The District of Columbia jail was not as big as the Occoquan workhouse was and so most of the women were sent there. Unfortunately, they were treated as criminals. They always asked to be treated as political prisoners. Now, many of these women were attorneys. They knew their rights, but they were never treated as political prisoners. They were treated poorly in both places. We have some actual information from the one in Lorton. The women were, in fact, beaten. They were fed maggot infested food. They slept on urine soaked mattresses. They were given vomit encrusted blankets and. They did go on hunger strikes in both places, and they did not have access to their personal effects. They did not have access to their attorneys. It was really, really, very difficult time for these women, and they were forced to work. They had to do sewing, they had to do cleaning, they had to do all sorts of things. 

Pat Wirth  25:20

One of the things that they decided was that they did not want to have Lucy burns and Alice Paul in the same prison. And for the longest time, Alice never picketed because they knew that they would grab her right off the street if they could. But Lucy kept picketing, and she was sent to the Occoquan workhouse. She served more jail time than any other suffragist, and she was in jail for over seven months. I mean, she was almost exclusively in jail. It was pretty awful. And when Alice did, in fact, picket that she was arrested and she was sent to the jail in DC proper, and they sent her to a psychiatric ward. They were trying to get her admitted to an insane asylum and just get rid of her, but what they did was she was subjected to grueling interrogation by doctors from Columbia institution for the mentally insane. They tried to discredit her leadership the suffrage movement in general, but at the end of the day, the doctor said about Alice courage in women is often mistaken for insanity, because what kind of a person would be willing to be arrested? They just didn't get that women were not happy with their plight in life, that they weren't mentioned in the Constitution, and that they wanted equality. They wanted to be able to vote. 

Pat Wirth  26:45

The jailings began in June, and they went on into July and August and September and October. And women were jailed, and lot of the sentences were pretty long, not all of them, but some of them were and then something happened on November 14, 1917, and this has become known as the night of terror, there were 36 women who were sent by train to the Occoquan workhouse. They were aged between 17 and 73, years old, and the prison warden, Mr. Whitaker, went down to Quantico, and he brought up a bunch of Marines who were not in uniform. The women's quarters were across the street from where the men were housed. The men were housed in these brick buildings, the jails for them, but the women were in a wooden building, and it was like a dormitory. It was like one big giant room with bed after bed after bed after bed, and there was a big porch that you would go into first before you went inside. And when the women got there, they once again asked to be treated as political prisoners, and like to read something out of a book called "Jailed For Freedom". It was written by Doris Stevens. She was there and was part of this event, and this is what she had to say. 

Pat Wirth  28:11

It was about half past seven at night when we got to Occoquan workhouse. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, who spoke for all of us, said she must speak to Whittaker, the superintendent of the place. Suddenly, the door literally burst open, and Whittaker burst in like a tornado. Some men followed him. We could see a crowd of them on the porch. They were not in uniform. Mrs. Lewis stood up. Some of us had been sitting and lying on the floor. We were so tired, she had hardly begun to spoke, saying We demanded to be treated as political prisoners. When Whitaker said, You shut up, I have men here to handle you. Then he shouted, seize her. I turned and saw men spring toward her, and then someone screamed to have taken Mrs. Lewis, a man sprang at me and caught me by my shoulder. I remember saying, I'll come with you. Don't drag me. I have a lame foot, but I was jerked down the steps and away into the dark. I didn't have my feet on the ground. I guess that's what saved me. The building to which they took us was lighted up as we came to it. We were rushed into a large room that opened on a large hall with stone cells on each side. They were perfectly dark punishment cells. Is what they called them. Mine was filthy. It had no window save a slip on the top and no furniture but an iron bed covered with a thin straw pad and an open toilet flushed from outside the cell. 

Pat Wirth  29:48

And this goes on to talk about how one woman was thrown into the cell. Her head hit that iron bed. She fell on the floor. Her cellmate thought she was dead and suffered a heart attack. They called and asked for medical attention. They didn't get any whatsoever. Lucy Burns was trying to take role of who was there. So she was talking, you know, she was going through the the names of the people to see if they were there, to see how that they were doing. They took Lucy and they strung her up on rafters over the head, so her arms were up and she was hanging there all night. These women were given no food or drink for over 36 hours. Lucy, when they took her down in the morning, was almost dead from suffocation because she couldn't breathe. I mean, she just kept slumping down, and all the weight was on her lungs and she couldn't breathe. It was absolutely horrific. Now, nobody has ever been able to say exactly who leaked this to the media, but it got leaked whether it was guards that did it, whether or people that were released from prison that began to talk about it. But this hit the media in a big way. This went coast to coast. This went over the pond to Europe. People were aware of what happened to these women on this night of terror. It was horrible. 

Pat Wirth  31:17

On November 23 an attorney that was representing the suffragists brought a trial, saying that the woman should never have been taken out of DC into Virginia in the first place, and all of the women that were in the workhouse in Virginia were then transferred to the jail in DC, and then on November 26 and November 27 all sentences were commuted for all of these women. So what do you suppose happened then we have this president that's in the midst of a war, and he keeps telling everybody there's nothing that we can do. And so seven weeks later, he goes into Congress and says, you know, I've been thinking, maybe we ought to, we ought to think about women getting the vote. After all, we have all of these dedicated nurses who are over in Germany taking care of our boys who are on the front lines. And I believe that it's time that we consider giving women the vote. And of course, the suffragists were never mentioned. But the timing is just too close for the night of terror not to have any influence on that at all. 

Pat Wirth  32:33

And so on June 4, 1919, full Congress passed the 19th Amendment, and then it had to go to the States, because it needed 36 states to ratify at that time. So there you have it. I think that was a real, really important what happened in DC and Virginia that really had a huge impact on the suffrage movement. And then I do want to just give you a couple comments of what then happened with the National Women's party, because they did continue their efforts for women's equality. Alice recognized that getting the vote was very, very important. They were finally considered, for sure, to be citizens. Women were being considered citizens, but she also understood that that didn't give them equal rights in the Constitution of the United States. So she wrote with others the Equal Rights Amendment. It was first introduced in 1923 and it was then, you know, it was introduced year after year after year that finally got all of the states ratified that needed to do so. But then they're just technical things that are never been resolved. So that's never been passed. 

Pat Wirth  33:43

In 1929 Alva Belmont, who was one of their big financial backers, had a mansion in DC on Capitol Hill, and she deeded that mansion to the National Women's party, and that's on 144 Constitution Avenue. And in 2020 the National Women's party deeded that house to the National Park Service, and the name changed and became the Belmont Paul Women's Equality National Monument under President Obama, I happened to be at that ceremony. The reason that the women had to do this is and give it over to the National Park Service. Was because the house was full of black mold, and they didn't have the money to remedy it, and so this was the way out to be able to do that. And then it was closed for two years for the mold remediation. And then NWP ceased operation on January 120, 21 it merged with the Alice Paul Institute in New Jersey. So that was the that was when the National Women's party literally went out of business. But it was this story is just amazing. I mean, I very often like to call this the best kept secret in American history, because it. Surely was not in any of my history books when I was growing up. It still isn't. I will say that, because the centennial of the 19th Amendment was in 2020 there was a big movement, even by the government, the Congress set up a women's national suffrage Centennial Commission, and its purpose was to let every corner of our country know that that was the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote. 

Pat Wirth  35:28

But for African American women, who were citizens, their problem was the majority of them lived in Jim Crow states, and so they weren't able to vote. So it wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, 45 years after the 19th Amendment, that all women did get the vote. But these women, boy, they they fought hard. I'm so proud of them, because when I first got into this and I first started learning about the suffrage movement, when I became affiliated with The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association, I kind of thought of those women as those women. And then, you know, I looked at us in modern times, but by the end of my education, if you will, I recognized we were them. They would be us today. And that was a big revelation to me. That was a big revelation. But they were us, they were us, and they did it the best they could with the technology and so forth that they had. And I continue to be amazed at what they accomplished without all of the technology that we have.

CM Marihugh  36:35

You think about what it took to get a petition with 100,000 signatures on it that was going door to door. It's real grassroots work. You have likely led hundreds of tours at the turning point Memorial. And what do you think visitors are most moved about after they've had the tour?

Pat Wirth  36:57

Well, thank you for asking that question. We have a variety of groups that come in of all ages. We have groups coming from all over. We have people that are traveling from Europe that hear about us, because suffrage was fought for there as well for women. So there, they have an interest in history. We have Girl Scout troops that come in and do their bridging ceremony, because we have a bridge there. But I think that most really don't understand the level of physical abuse that went on. They don't really understand the picketing. They don't know about the Silent Sentinels, and so I think that they're very surprised by that this memorial was intended to be a national memorial, as a visual symbol and an educational tool to elevate these women to their proper places in history. Because other than Susan B Anthony, there were literally millions of women who were suffragists, coast to coast. They had no idea there were millions of women in our country who were fighting for the vote. So I think that that is probably the biggest thing. And then the other thing that I like to impress upon our visitors during our tour is that when the 19th Amendment was passed, literally 25 million American women got the vote, and it was the biggest expansion of democracy in a single day that ever occurred. Biggest expansion of democracy in a single day. Not a shot was fired, and it never got into the history books, let alone the suffragists being the ones that were responsible for that. So I think that that's always a huge surprise. It's like, Wow. I didn't know that. It's like most people don't realize that.

CM Marihugh  38:44

I want to thank you so much for being with us today. You've given us such incredible insight into what happened. Thank you so much.

Pat Wirth  38:54

Thank you for having me.

CM Marihugh  38:55

Thank you for joining us this week. We hope you contact us with comments or questions. The National Votes for Women Trail Project is a work in progress. Please click on the support the project link to contribute to our ongoing work. The trail is a project of the National Collaborative for Women's History sites, a non profit organization dedicated to putting women's history on the map. Our theme is Standing On The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse and recorded by Earth Mama. Be sure to join us next time. 

Earth Mama  39:53

I am standing on the shoulders 

Of the ones who came before me, 

I am honored by their passion 

For our liberty. 

I will stand a little taller. 

I will work a little longer, 

And my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me. 

My shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me.