The 19th Amendment: From Seneca Falls To Ratification Americans have long fought for equal rights, and they continue to fight for them today. The Constitution deemed several freedoms as so important that the Founding Fathers wrote them out in the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately for some, those rights did not include universal suffrage. Few could vote at the founding of America, but in time all white males gained the right to vote without discrimination towards age or social status. However, women remained barred from the ballot, regardless of race. Though the Suffrage Movement started as a women’s social movement, it evolved into a driving force that would hold the power to ratify a nineteenth constitutional amendment. The Women’s Rights …show more content…
In June of 1917, six well-bred and educated women picketed in front of the White House, causing a scene that disrupted traffic. Police arrested the women due to the disruption of traffic and sentenced them to either pay a fine or serve jail time, of which they all chose the latter. This started a string of a string of arrests that only increased in number throughout the year. In Mid-August of 1917, the suffragists in front of the White House unfurled a banner that read “Kaiser Wilson,” a direct insult to the president that sparked fury in the time of war. Violence from the public then erupted to such a degree that the women could not leave their home base of Cameron House until the police stepped in two days …show more content…
Prison guards isolated the women, handcuffed them to iron bed frames, and fed them moldy, worm-infested meals. The incarcerated included Alice Paul, one of the first to begin a hunger strike which many other suffragists soon joined. The prison staff misdiagnosed several of the women, including Paul, and sent them to an abusive psychiatric war. Following their hunger strikes, many had to go through the torment of forced feeding three times a day via a stiff, rubber feeding tube. In a trial held in Alexandria, Virginia on January 8, 1918 several of the women from the Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia known for having terrible conditions, made an appearance in the courtroom. This allowed the public to see them for the first time. Ragged, bruised, and undernourished, the blatant evidence of abuse on their bodies appalled the media and general public. Within three days of the hearing, the prisons released all those incarcerated under suffrage-related charges with no explanation, and the Suffrage Movement