On March 3, 1913, the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the city of Washington, D.C. should have been solely abuzz in anticipation of an incoming president-elect, who would have arrived at Union Station and where thousands should be there to greet him. Instead...
...on that particular day, about 5,000 women--including Helen Keller and journalist Nellie Bly--staged a protest parade for women's suffrage down the length of Pennsylvania Ave, demanding the right to vote. An estimated half-a-million spectators gathered to watch.
Many--if not most--of the spectators jeered and catcalled the women as they marched. The jeering soon turned into violence, and the hundreds of policemen assigned to protect the protest either stood silently by or joined in the attacks. Women were beaten with clubs and fists.
The fallout of the march resulted in more than 100 women being treated at area hospitals.
Let's consider the time period. These women marched believing they'd never see a woman in Congress in their lifetime and that the right to vote wasn't coming overnight, either.
Let's consider the time period. These women marched believing they'd never see a woman in Congress in their lifetime and that the right to vote wasn't coming overnight, either.
They marched knowing the reaction to their protest would be violence and mockery. And what did these women do the next day, many of them broken and bandaged for using their voice? They got back up and kept using their voices. For them, this was not the end but the beginning.
They marched for things they knew they were not likely to see. And so, even though they shouldn't have ever needed to march, they did so, not for themselves but for their daughters and granddaughters.
Imagine the Black women who showed up ready to march in solidarity and, horribly, were asked to take a place in the back of the procession. Imagine the strength and courage to overcome both sexism AND racism to secure a better future for their daughters.
Ida B. Wells rejected that white supremacist nonsense and joined the women marching from her state, daring organizers to try and stop her. Imagine doing this in the midst of women around you being physically assaulted by a crowd of men magnitudes larger.
These women didn't march just for themselves. They marched for the future. The fallout of the parade made national headlines, overshadowing the start of a new presidential administration. The collective action made women's suffrage a central topic of the national dialogue.
By 1920, seven years later, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress and ratified by a majority of states after Woodrow Wilson begrudgingly signed it, having long been opposed to the equality of women and people of color.
Perhaps nothing else is truer about our country's history: oppressed groups, though they should never have to do so, fighting back and overcoming prejudice and discrimination.
When Professor Anita Hill was degraded and embarrassed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 after coming forward about sexual harassment she endured at the hands of Clarence Thomas, her strength on the national stage inspired women to fight back.
The next year, more women were elected to the House and Senate than ever before, primarily borne out of Anita Hill's treatment. Women do not go away quietly in our country's history. It has never happened, and it never will. Women always fight back. Always.
Today is horrible, y'all. I'm heartbroken, and I know you are, too. But I also know this: we will make them live to regret this with every fiber of their being. We will fight back, and November is just the beginning. We are on the cusp of revolution. Let's get to work. /thread
