The Prison Special: Suffragists Who Went to Jail, Then Told the Nation

In 1917, suffragists picketed the White House for women's right to vote. Police arrested them for "obstructing traffic" — a minor charge meant to make them stop. It didn't. From June through November 1917, more than 150 women were arrested. They refused to pay the fines the courts imposed, and were sent to jail.

Lucy Burns in prison, probably at the Occoquan Workhouse, November 1917. Harris & Ewing, photographer; National Woman's Party collection, Library of Congress

Lucy Burns

Lucy Burns, a leader of the National Woman's Party, returned to the picket line again and again — and served more time in prison than any other American suffragist.

The Prison Special

In 1919, the National Woman's Party launched another campaign to win Americans over. Many of the women who had been jailed for picketing set out across the country by train, wearing dresses made to look like the clothes they had been forced to wear in prison. They called the trip the "Prison Special." At every stop they gave speeches and told crowds about the terrible treatment they had suffered.

Women in prison dress march through a railroad station on the Prison Special. Lucy Burns carries a banner reading "Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God." National Woman's Party collection

Their banner made an argument: though they had been arrested and punished, what they had done was right — "Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God."

Words to know

More from the Park Service: Lucy Burns · "Democracy Limited": the Prison Special · The Night of Terror.

Sources

Based on "Teaching Suffrage: The Prison Special and the Courage to Speak Out," an activity for fifth graders created with the Hard History Project, whose questions are left out, National Park Service, Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument; a work of the United States government in the public domain, rewritten in hubnx's own words.