3rd quarter research

Celeste Nelson
3rd Quarter Research Paper

 Oxygen, water, food, shelter, sleep; these are the five basic things one needs for survival. Food is ranking on number three, which makes it pretty important. I mean, it's a simple idea, if you don't eat, you won't survive. Hunger strikes happen all over the world to protest for basic rights. By 1910, women everywhere were hunger striking for the right to vote.

I think that a hunger striking for something you believe in is very admirable. It's like dying slowly and painfully for the good of humanity. If one were to die from starvation, in would not be in vain because that death is another tick on someones record, another death that someone is responsible for. Another reason I find hunger striking to be admirable is because it is a peaceful protest. It is hard to get your point across without using abrasive and sometimes even violent ways. I don't like or believe in violent protest because I think if people use violent tactics, it gives the government reason to respond in violent ways. It doesn't always get a point across or catch everyone's attention to picket or march. A hunger strike is a very powerful and also peaceful way to protest conditions. But because it is to intentionally cause bodily harm to oneself, I also believe that a hunger strike should only be used in the worst conditions, or as a last resort.    

 The hunger strikes were meant to get women recognized by society.  President Woodrow Wilson refused to help with getting a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, despite his pledge to support women's suffrage. Alice Paul was the leader of the National American Women's Suffrage and staged silent protests outside the White House in 1917. This ultimately  led to her arrest and in protest of jail conditions, she began a hunger strike. in response they relocated Alice to a psychiatric ward where she was force fed raw eggs through a plastic tube. After that, other women joined the strike and put Wilson in a negative light for letting people starve.

   On March 3, 1913, Inez Milholland led the great woman suffrage parade on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. There were twenty four floats, nine bands, four mounted brigades, three heralds, and more than five thousand marchers. The women were dressed as their occupations, in nurse, farm woman, pharmacists, students, actresses and more. They wanted to show all the things that were being done by women, but still they could not vote.  They marched for a few blocks with out hassle until mostly men overtook the streets making it almost impossible for the marchers to move. They grabbed, pushed, made fun of, and assaulted. The policemen, instead of helping them would join in with the others taunting the marchers. over one hundred marchers were taken to the emergency hospital that day. Even through the ridiculous struggle, the parade got to it's end at the Treasury Building.

   At the Treasury Building, the marchers had a pageant or play to show that over the years men and women have been fighting for the same things in co-operation and they will not stop till they get justice. The pageant began with the performance of the star spangled banner and then Colombia, dressed in national colors came out from the top of the steps. After her, Charity entered, walking over a path of rose petals. Then Liberty came and a 'dove of peace' was released. In the finale, Colombia was surrounded by Justice, Charity, Liberty, Peace, and Hope. They were all dressed in flowing robes and beautiful, colorful scarves, trumpets were playing. The  New York Times described the event as "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country".




  You can't really see the picture, but it is of the pageant.

The march and play that the women put on was truly amazing, it had so much media and controversy around it, that a few blocks away at a railroad station where a party was supposed to welcome the newly elected president, Woodrow Wilson, stood empty. Everyone was at the parade.

people were slowly beginning to support women's suffrage for different reasons. Some supported women's suffrage because they believed that women were morally superior to men.  


 A political cartoon depicting a woman being force fed

 


Another political cartoon depicting a woman being force fed


Women protesting 


 Women protesting for liberty  

 
 Woman Suffrage Headquarters

Works Cited

"The History Project." At UC Davis. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2015.

 "American Women: MARCHING FOR THE VOTE: REMEMBERING THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARADE OF 1913." American Women: MARCHING FOR THE VOTE: REMEMBERING THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARADE OF 1913. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.