Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Lucy Burns - Suffragette


A lot of peoples' minds, when they think of womens' suffrage, tend to go straight to the big names: Susan B. Anthony , Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul. While there is nothing wrong with that (they were all extraordinary women who contributed so much to the cause), I think we forget about other women involved in the fight for equality.


Lucy Burns is one of those women. She fought side by side with Alice Paul in the National Women's Party. When the NWP began their silent protests outside of the White House, she was there. When those protesters were arrested for "obstructing traffic", she was one of them. When Alice Paul conducted hunger strikes in the Occoquan Workhouse, she participated. In fact, she was jailed 7 times in the workhouse, more than any other suffragette, including Paul. A historian even recounted during the force feedings that it took "five people to hold her down, and when she refused to open her mouth, they shoved the feeding tube up her nostril."


After women gained the right to vote, Burns retired from public life, caring for her youngest sister's child (her sister died in childbirth). Burns herself passed away in 1966, after dedicated her remaining life to the Roman Catholic faith and her niece.

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