Vote. Please.

My sister, Janet Coryell, is a professor of history at Western Michigan University, focusing on women's history. Here's the conversation and response:




Micaela Ayers wrote:

Janet,

Ok, sis, you're my source. Is this a fair representation of what
happened to these women?

I'm shocked, I think.

Micaela
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Pretty much.
J
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Subject: voting
From: Johanna Wilkinson
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 13:39:28 -0800 (PST)
To: Micaela Ayers ,


Ladies:
I checked out this at www.snopes.com (the urban legends/hoax site I use) and didn't find it listed so perhaps it's true. I admit to wondering this year when I'm going to squeeze voting in, but I always do and I will again. This article certainly will remind me of the gift it is to vote, regardless of the outcome.
Jo
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A Little History on Women Voting
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night,
they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their
warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly
convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head
and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an
iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought
Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging,
beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow
Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they
tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid
into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks u ntil
word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why,
exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote
doesn't matter? It's raining?

Everyone should watch HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels." It is a
graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that we could
pull the curtain at the polling booth and have our say. I think some of
us needed the reminder.

"What would those women think of the way we use--or don't use--our right
to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but
those of us who did seek to learn. The right to vote, should become
valuable to us "all over again."

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and
DVD.

We are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and maybe a little
shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a
psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be
permanently institutionalized.

And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong,
he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor
admonished the men:
"Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

Please pass this on to all the women you know (ACTUALLY TO EVERYONE YOU
KNOW). We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so
hard for by these very courageous women.



Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Eleanor Roosevelt