Silent for Suffrage (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this trailside historical marker:

Silent for Suffrage
Turning Point Suffragist Memorial
— National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior —

The fence you see in front of you once surrounded the White House grounds. Can you imagine standing silently beside these fenceposts, drenched in the rain, holding a heavy banner in your hand while looking directly at President Woodrow Wilson? For several months in 1917, protesters known as Silent Sentinels stood beside this fence and demanded President Wilson support a constitutional amendment enfranchising women. After the U.S. entered World War I, public opinion turned against the picketers, and the women were attacked by crowds. 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 such harsh treatment filled the newspapers, the prisoners were released. Later denying that the protesters influenced him, President Wilson voiced his support for a federal suffrage amendment in 1918.

[Captions:]
Three National Woman's Party picketers from New York wearing slickers hold banners outside in the rain.

The photograph you see here of the White House fence is the same one in front of you. This section of the fence surrounded the White House for over two hundred years.

Records of the National Woman's Party, 1917, Library of Congress

The flag of the National Woman's Party.

"Purple is the color of loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause. White, the emblem of purity symbolizes the quality of our purpose; and gold, the color of light and life, is as the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving.

The Suffragist, December 6, 1913
Woman Suffrage Pickets at the White House, Harris and Ewing, 1917, Library of Congress

Erected 2021 by National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.