Shirley Marshall, The History Press, 2024
Are the women pictured above just admiring a piece of paper?
NO! They are watching Lucy Branham publicly burn one of President Woodrow Wilson’s speeches extolling “Democracy.” This demonstration, on September 16, 1918, was the first but not the last time they used fire to make their point.
Members of the National Woman’s Party, the protesters demanded action and not words. They were asked to support the war overseas, they said, but had no voice in their own government. They demanded passage of the suffrage amendment.
An Inside Story of the National Woman’s Party
Elizabeth Kalb, a 21-year-old who wanted to be a writer, was one of these women. She arrived in Washington to fight for suffrage and this was her first public event. Was she scared? Arrested? What happened next?
Elizabeth, in this photo and second from right above, will tell you all about this day and many more.
In letters to her mother, Elizabeth describes harassment, detention, jail, the flu — and the fun of working with like-minded women to win the right to vote!
These letters create an indelible image of life in the frantic hub of the National Woman’s Party. Their headquarters included a restaurant, press room, meeting rooms and bedrooms for staff and volunteers. Elizabeth details people, places and events that shaped the fight for women’s rights.
Yet an eyewitness account, such as Elizabeth’s, can both illuminate and obfuscate. Such testimony provides a powerful sense of time and place. But witnesses also can miss details, omit information or see through a veil of preconceived expectations.
What other amazing women were fighting for the right to vote? What other barriers kept them from voting even after 1920?
“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class, it is the cause of human kind, the very birthright of humanity.…”
Dr. Anna J. Cooper
A Radical Suffragist in Washington D.C. combines exciting, in-the-moment history with a broader exploration of the fight for suffrage.
aVAILABLE at bookstores and online
The question of who participated in American democracy was a source of controversy from the start of the new nation. John Adams wrote the following in 1776, disagreeing with a colleague sympathetic to broadening voting rights:
“Few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest. Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open [such a] source of controversy and altercation, as would be opened by attempting to [change] the qualifications of voters. There will be no end of it. New claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man, who has not a [dime], will demand an equal voice with any other in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and [surrender] all ranks, to one common level.”
— John Adams, “John Adams Explains Why People Without Property Should Not Be Able to Vote,” SHEC: Resources for Teachers, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1645.ohn Adams, accessed July 30, 2023. EMPHASIS ADDED.
So suffrage – an individual’s most basic voice in an elective government – was not originally protected. The resulting history of voting rights is a constant shift in priorities, fears and power. That history also is a testimony to those with and without property, of all races and genders/gender identities, who fought for the rights of people to have a voice.
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coming EVENTS
2024 Gaithersburg Book Festival
Bohrer Park, Gaithersburg MD
May 18, 10 am – 6 pm
The Festival has a wonderful lineup of speakers and workshops. I’ll have a booth there and am looking forward to meeting fellow book-lovers!
For more info on the Festival, see gaithersburgbookfestival.org
Elizabeth’s book: A trilogy
Books Sold Separately – the following are in progress
Elizabeth and the Desert Life
Elizabeth and her mother spent six months in Palm Springs CA in 1922/23.
The new freedom of “Auto Camping” included learning to drive and maintain a car, as well as avoiding scorpion bites and sand storms.
Meeting members of the Agua Caliente tribe led to a deeper understanding of their struggles to maintain a presence and life on the land.
Elizabeth and China’s Civil War
After befriending Chinese students in California, Elizabeth moved to war-torn China in 1925.
For almost a year, she wrote back to her mother with detailed reports on life in Peking [Beijing].
She paints a vibrant picture of the people she meets, Chinese and foreign; places she visits; airplane bombings and student protests.
A Radical Suffragist in Washington D.C. 