Iron Jawed Angels and Why Women Should Vote |
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In February 2004 I watched the HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels that chronicles the evolution of the women's suffrage movement. The women became known to their guards as "iron jawed" because of their fierce determination to NOT be force fed during a hunger strike while imprisoned. It made such an impression on me that I immediately purchased the DVD and have loaned it out to many of my women friends. I was never taught this story in school and my feeling is that many Americans do not really know the full history of the struggle that took place to ensure that women were given the right to vote. |
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As the mother of three adult daughters, I hope I have impressed upon them how important it is for them to vote -- not only because their voices need to be heard, but also to honor the generations of women who fought so valiantly to secure this right that so many of us now take for granted. Recently many people have sent me the following excellent email that is obviously over 4 years old as the author refers to having just watched "a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie, Iron Jawed Angels." The email did not credit an author so I went on a "Google hunt" to see if I could ascertain who indeed had written it. It appears that it was written by Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. So, I've posted the email below giving credit to Connie Schultz. At the end of the article I have included links to photos and more stories.
This is the story of our Grandmothers and
Great-grandmothers;
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. |
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<<See the dramatization of when
the women prisoners joined Alice Paul in the hunger strike
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Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder. All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.. My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn. The right to vote has become valuable to me all over again." HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order. It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. "Alice Paul is strong, and brave," he said. "That doesn't make her crazy." Then the doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity." Iron Jawed Angels is available on DVD through Amazon.com Useful links to photos and more information:
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WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE (by
Connie Schultz)
They
hurled Dora Lewis
When one of the leaders,
Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her
to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured
liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like
this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.