Lucy
Burns
was
born in Brooklyn, New Jersey, on 28th July, 1879. An Irish Catholic,
Burns studied at Vassar and Yale Graduation School before teaching
English at Erasmus High School.
In 1906 Burns moved to Germany to study
languages. This included spells at the University of Berlin (1906-1908)
and the University of Bonn (1908) before continuing her studies at
Oxford University.
While in England, Burns joined the Women's Social
and Political Union (WSPU) and her activities resulted in her
being arrested and imprisoned. She met Alice
Paul, another American working with the WSPU and when they returned
home they formed the Congressional Union for
Women Suffrage (CUWS).
Burns and Paul attempted to introduce the militant methods used by
the Women's Social and Political Union in
Britain. This included organizing huge demonstrations and the daily
picketing of the White House.
After the United States joined the First World War,
Burns was continually assaulted by patriotic male bystanders, while
picketing outside the White House. Arrested several times, she spent
more time prison than any other American suffragist.
Burns
retired from political life after women in the United
States got the vote. Lucy
Burns
died on 22nd December, 1966.
(1)
Doris
Stevens, Jailed
for Freedom (1920)
Finding that a suffrage committee in the House and a report in the
Senate had not silenced our banners, the administration cast about
for another plan by which to stop the picketing. This time they turned
desperately to longer terms of imprisonment. They were, indeed, hard
pressed when they could choose such a cruel and stupid course.
Our answer to this policy
was more women on the picket line on the outside, and a protest on
the inside of prison. We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment,
to demand to be treated as political prisoners. We felt that, as a
matter of principle, this was the dignified and self-respecting thing
to do, since we had offended politically, not criminally. We believed
further that a determined, organized effort to make clear to a wider
public the political nature of the offense would intensify the administration's
embarrassment and so accelerate their final surrender.
It fell to Lucy Burns,
vice-chairman of the organization, to be the leader of the new protest.
Miss Burns is in appearance
the very symbol of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red
hair burns and is not consumed - a flaming torch. Her
body is strong and vital. It is said that Lucy Stone had the "voice"
of the pioneers. Lucy Burns without doubt possessed the "voice"
of the modern suffrage movement. Musical, appealing, persuading -
she could move the
most resistant person. Her talent as an orator
is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy
with her audience. Her emotional quality
is so powerful that her intellectual capacity,
which is quite as great, is not always
at once perceived.
She had no sooner begun
to organize her comrades for protest than the officials sensed a "plot"
and removed her at once to solitary confinement. But they were too
late. Taking the leader only hastened the rebellion. A forlorn piece
of paper was discovered on which was written their initial demand.
It was then passed from prisoner to prisoner through holes in the
wall surrounding leaden pipes, until a finished document had been
perfected and signed by all the prisoners.
(2)
Mary White Ovington,
letter to Lucy Burns of the National Woman's
Party (17th December, 1920)
I am writing to you as an advisory member of the National Woman's
Party asking if you will arrange that at the meeting, February fifteenth,
a colored woman be invited to speak. I would suggest as the speaker,
Mrs. Mary B. Talbert, until last June president of the Federation
of Colored Women, and this summer one of
the ten official members of the International Council of Women which
met at Christiana. Mrs. Talbert is able, liberal in thought, and perhaps
the best known colored woman in the United States today.
There was little voting and much
terrorizing of Negroes in the South during the past elections and
at Ocoee, Florida, there was a massacre. But equally sinister was
the refusing to register women at such a place as Hampton, Virginia,
where Hampton Institute has through many years endeavored to maintain
kindly feelings between the two races, and yet where colored women
were so insulted when they attempted to register that one woman said:
"I could kill the clerk who questioned me; I could kill his wife
and children."
If the South means to awaken a spirit like this
it will eventually have war to face. But I believe that the Negro
woman can win her right to vote if she is upheld by the rest of the
country. The thinking southern woman is generally more fairminded
than the southern man, but she cannot secure justice for the colored
woman without she has the backing of all of us.
Will you not therefore, endeavor to have a committee
appointed out of your great meeting in February which shall investigate
and take some action regarding the status of the colored woman? The
Woman's Party must have in its membership, South as well as North,
women of broad enough vision and deep enough purpose to attack this
problem. And if the women attack it, it will be solved.
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