trailblazer lucy burns...

1913

1917 - In Prison

Lucy Burns
July 28, 1879-December 22, 1966
American suffragist and women's rights advocate -

Lucy was a close friend of Alice Paul and together, they formed the National Woman's Party [NWP]. She was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Irish Catholic family. She was a gifted student and attended university at Vassar College and Yale University before becoming an English teacher. In 1906 at age twenty-seven she moved to Germany to resume her studies in language. She returned to New York in 1908 to work as a teacher again. Three years later Burns moved to the United Kingdom, where she graduated from Oxford University.

Lucy Burns met Alice Paul in England after becoming a member of the Women's Social and Political Union, an organization dedicated to fighting for women's rights in the United Kingdom. The feminist struggle for equality and woman's suffrage in the UK inspired Burns and Paul to continue the fight on their return to the United States. They joined the National American Women Suffrage Association as its Congressional lobbyists. However, they eventually split from NAWSA in a dispute over tactics and, in 1913 formed the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage.

Three years later, dissatisfied with the progress of congressional lobbying, they formed the National Woman's Party (NWP). They were feared and despised by many men of the era, and were opposed by conservative women as well as by more conservative suffragettes who advocated less militant tactics. However, Burns and Paul were committed to direct action in fighting for women's rights, particularly the right to vote. The National Woman's Party led dozens of women to picket the White House in Washington DC beginning in 1916. The NWP was not a political party per se and did not run candidates for office. A bi-partisan organization, it directed its attacks at the office of the President, Woodrow Wilson. Burns also opposed World War I, seeing it as a war led by powerful men that resulted in young men being drafted and giving their lives with little free will.

Burns was arrested while picketing the White House and was sent to Occoquan Workhouse. In jail, Burns joined Alice Paul and many other women in hunger strikes, to demonstrate their commitment to their cause, claiming that they were political prisoners. Burns was force-fed and possibly tortured, as was Paul. Clift recounts that the force feeding of Lucy Burns required "five people to hold her down, and when she refused to open her mouth, they shoved the feeding tube up her nostril." Of the well-known suffragists of the era, Burns spent the most time in jail.

After women gained the right to vote in the United States, Burns retired from political life and devoted herself to the Catholic Church and her orphaned niece. She died on December 22, 1966.

In 2004, HBO Films broadcast "Iron Jawed Angels", chronicling the struggle of Lucy Burns, Alice Paul and other suffragists. Burns was portrayed by Australian actress Frances O'Connor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Burns