You Need this Herstory

Go to Peacocks and Lilies and read the Real Herstory of the 19th amendment and the 72 year struggle which included prisons and torture in prisons by sadistic guards.

On November 15, 1917, the Warden of Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered 40 of his guards on what is now known as the Night of Terror. The women were innocent and defenseless. By the end of the night, they were also barely alive.

Forty prison guards wielding clubs went on a rampage with their warden’s blessing against the 33 women wrongly convicted of “obstructing sidewalk traffic.” They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked
her out cold.

Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. (Why Women Vote )

The details of the Night of Terror were the last straw. Public outrage and opposition had been building as news leaked that there were hunger strikes and forced feedings, but everything boiled to a head after the Night of Terror.

Everyone, from ordinary folks to politicians in Washington, began to talk about the women and their plight. Demands issued from many quarters that they be released, which they finally were, on November 27th and 28th of 1917, many after nearly half a year in prison.