Suffragists and the Police, 1909–1918: A Lesson in Photographs

This National Park Service activity, created with the Hard History Project for students in fifth and sixth grades (ages 10–13), uses historic photographs to ask: How does my identity affect how I interact with others? Students learn to see how people's many identities make them complex individuals, to tell individual unfairness from institutional injustice, and to recognize figures, groups, events and strategies from history.

A suffragist poses in a proposed police uniform for women, Cincinnati, Ohio, about 1909. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

Women and the police

The woman above is not a police officer. She is a suffragist modeling a proposed uniform for policewomen, to argue that women should be hired as officers. Early twentieth-century women wanted more than the vote; they also demanded equal access to jobs and professions.

In Washington, D.C., women began working for the police department in 1881, and in 1918 three policewomen formed the Women's Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Department. In the early 1900s, though, women in the department could handle only police matters involving women and children.

Three photographs

Students study three photographs of suffragists and police in 1917 and 1918, then answer questions.

Photo 1: a policewoman approaches suffragists protesting at the White House gates. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Photo 1. A woman police officer approaches suffragists protesting at the White House gates. On the left, Florence Youmans holds a banner the officer is trying to confiscate; in the center, between them, is fellow protester Annie Arniel; to the right, other suffragists hold up banners. Florence and Annie were arrested for refusing to give up the banner.

Photo 2: the arrest of White House pickets Catherine Flanagan of Hartford, Connecticut (left), and Madeleine Watson of Chicago (right), August 1917. Harris & Ewing, National Woman's Party Collection, Library of Congress.

Photo 2. A policewoman stands between Catherine Flanagan and Madeleine Watson, holding their arms. The two wear suffrage sashes and carry the banners they had been using to protest. The National Woman's Party had begun picketing the White House in January 1917 to win President Wilson's support for women's suffrage. A few months later, crowds began attacking the pickets, angry that they criticized the president while the country was fighting World War I. The police ordered the party to stop picketing; it refused. By the time of this photograph, many women had already been jailed for picketing.

Photo 3: police arresting National Woman's Party demonstrators outside the Senate Office Building, October 1918. Harris & Ewing, National Woman's Party Collection, Library of Congress.

Photo 3. Here the arresting officers are men. They confront a line of National Woman's Party protesters with sashes and banners on Constitution Avenue, seizing banners and forcibly arresting women at the front while two young men look on. By now, almost a year after the White House pickets, President Wilson had come to support women's suffrage and had asked Congress to pass a constitutional amendment. The women were protesting at the Capitol, where Congress meets — and although a judge had ruled that they had a right to protest, they were about to be arrested.

Words to know

• confiscate — to take someone's property;
• picket — to stand outside a building or place to protest or to win support for a cause;
• suffrage — the right to vote;
• suffragist — someone who works for the right to vote, especially for women.

Think about it

• Which woman is the police officer in Photo 1? How can you tell? Is it easier or harder to pick out the officers in Photo 3? Why?
• How are the arrests in the three photographs different? Why might they be different?
• Imagine you are a police officer ordered to arrest the suffragists. How do you feel about it?

Sources

• National Park Service, Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument and National Mall and Memorial Parks: "Teaching Suffrage: Arrested," part of the series Teaching Suffrage, created with the Hard History Project. The page spells Watson's first name both "Madeleine" and "Madeline"; the photograph's caption spelling is used here.