The Movement during World War I and the 1918 Pandemic
"We have made partners of the women in this war…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a participation of privilege and right?"
President Woodrow Wilson to Congress, June 4, 1918
By the fall of 1918, suffragists had battled for over 70 years and believed their victory was within reach. Earlier that year, in January 1918, the House of Representatives had passed the 19th Amendment (274-136) and President Woodrow Wilson, now an ardent supporter, had urged the Senate to also approve the amendment. It would fail in the Senate at the same that the global pandemic would hit the US, with hundreds of deaths being reported every week in DC and across the US. And with that, the suffragists would now face a new, more threatening opponent—a pandemic that would kill an estimated 675,000 Americans in one year, with 200,000 dying in October alone.
One suffragist in the New Orleans Times-Picayune is quoted, “Everything conspires against women suffrage. Now it is the influenza.” Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) would be stricken and weak with the virus while fearing that the 19th Amendment would languish in the Senate As Catt wrote to suffragist leaders across the US, “This new affliction is bringing sorrow into many suffrage homes and is presenting a serious new obstacle in our referendum campaigns and in the Congressional and Senatorial campaigns. We must therefore be prepared for failure."
Large public gatherings were banned, and with that, suffrage rallies and lobbying stopped. It is important to note that during the 1918 Pandemic, the US was also in the midst of World War I with 4.7 million American men fighting in Europe. The magnitude of American men dying in 1918 was devastating: 45,000 from the Pandemic and 53,402 on the battlefields in Europe. The women would use this time to prove themselves equal to men and as good citizens, for the first time ever working outside the home and in untraditional roles in the workforce as ambulance drivers, newspaper reporters, welders, parachute packers, working in business offices, in textile and ammunition factories, and as nurses in the Red Cross. The pandemic and WWI were also a time of budding opportunity for racial equality for black women in the workforce: the Red Cross reversed their position and would now allow African American women to serve as nurses in the war effort and in private homes.
During this same time the Silent Sentinels, the first people ever to picket the White House, began their controversial yet peaceful protest six days a week. President Woodrow Wilson had tolerated the suffragists representing the National Woman’s Party standing vigil at his gates until mid-1917, when crowds became violent as they viewed the Silent Sentinels as unpatriotic. Police would stand by and allow the women to be attacked by the angry mobs. During this two and a half year period approximately 2,000 women were arrested, and at one vigil more than 200 suffragists were arrested for allegedly disrupting traffic. Rather than pay fines the Silent Sentinels chose to serve jail time for what they considered exercising their constitutional rights. NWP leader Alice Paul received a particularly harsh sentence of seven months in prison, which included two weeks in solitary confinement.
Each day the women returned to the White House with their banners, calling out President Wilson for his hypocrisy in leading the US into World War I to defend freedom while denying it to women of his own country. Their jail terms increased from two days at the local DC District Jail to 60 terrifying days at the filthy, unsafe prison farm Occoquan Work House in Virginia. The women were chained, beaten, stripped naked, choked, stabbed, and assaulted. Some went on hunger strikes and were violently force fed. A particularly violent arrest of 33 women on November 14, 1917 known as “The Night of Terror" outraged the public enough to create sympathy for the suffragists and their cause. President Wilson, appalled by the shocking news stories detailing the violence the women endured, and aware of their contributions on behalf of the War and pandemic, and also fearing a negative backlash on his administration, finally stepped in and joined his suffragist daughter Jesse Woodrow Wilson Sayre to become an ardent supporter of the women’s cause.
Because of their contributions to keep Americans alive and healthy and the US workforce functioning, the women were now viewed as invaluable citizens. The suffragists felt the 19th Amendment was an appropriate reward for their selfless service to our country. Carrie Chapman Catt wrote an open letter to Congress about the suffragists’ contributions and their demand for the right to vote: “The increasing number of women wage-earners, many supporting families and supporting husbands, has thrown out the “women are (already) represented (by their husbands and fathers) argument.”
President Wilson unequivocally endorsed women’s rights in personal and written appeals, most importantly with his words to Congress "We have made partners of the women in this war…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a participation of privilege and right?" It would still be another year before the Senate voted on June 4, 1919 to approve the 19th Amendment; the next step would require a majority approval from the States before the final ratification of the 19th Amendment to become part of the US Constitution.
President Wilson spoke with pride when the 19th Amendment was finally passed: “I deem it one of the greatest honors of my life that this great event, so stoutly fought for, for so many years, should have occurred during the period of my administration.”