Silent for Suffrage

For several months in 1917, protesters known as Silent Sentinels stood silently outside the White House and demanded that President Woodrow Wilson support a constitutional amendment enfranchising women. After the U.S. entered World War I, public opinion turned against the picketers, and crowds attacked them. Law enforcement arrested the picketers for obstructing traffic and sent many of them to the Occoquan Workhouse in Lorton, Virginia. The prisoners, including suffragist leaders Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, continued their protest through hunger strikes and endured brutal forced feedings. After stories of the harsh treatment filled newspapers, the prisoners were released. President Wilson later voiced his support for a federal suffrage amendment in 1918 while denying that the protesters had influenced him.

Laurel Hill, Virginia · United States