The Story of the Woman's Party

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWER FROM

THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

Following the advice of the Judge, they kept moving. Across the street, a crowd had gathered in expectation of arrests. Standing about were policemen—a newspaper man said twenty-nine. The police walked along parallel with the women, and the crowd followed them. As the banner bearers crossed the street to the White House, the police seized them before they could get onto the sidewalks. An augmenting crowd surged about them. Some of the onlookers protested, but most of them took their cue from the police, and tore the flags away from the women. Apart from the pickets, Kitty Marion, who for some weeks had been selling the Suffragist on the streets, was attacked by a by-stander who snatched her papers away from her, tearing one of them up. Miss Marion was arrested. She protested at the behavior of her assailant and he was arrested too. Hazel Hunkins, who was not a part of the procession, came upon a man who had seized one of the banners carried by the pickets and was bearing it away. Miss Hunkins attempted to get it from him, and she also was arrested.

The police commandeered automobiles, and commenced bundling the women into them.

Immediately another group of women came marching up Pennsylvania Avenue on the opposite side of the street. This second group contained Mrs. Frances Green, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Lucile Shields, Joy Young, Elizabeth Stuyvesant, Lucy Burns. Joy Young, who is a little creature, led this group. They reached the West gate of the White House, and there the police arrested them. A Washington paper described with great glee how, like a tigress, little Joy Young fought to retain her banner, and how finally three policemen managed to overpower her. The women were booked for “unlawful assembly” all except Kitty Marion, who was charged with “disorderly conduct.”

Helena Hill Weed and Lucy Burns cross-examined the witnesses on behalf of the women. Mrs. Weed insisted that the torn, yellow banner should be brought into court. Throughout the trial, it hung suspended from the Judge’s bench—GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. Lucy Burns, examining the police officers, asked why citizens carrying banners on June 21 were protected by the police, and on July 4 arrested for doing the same thing. The officer replied that they were protected on June 21 because he had no orders for that day. The orders which came later were, he said, not to allow picketing, though he admitted there were no directions about seizing banners. The women brought out by skillful cross-questioning that it was the action of the police which had collected a disorderly crowd, and not the marching of the two groups of women; that at the former trial of a group of Suffrage pickets, the Judge himself had declared that marching pickets did not violate the law.

Lucy Burns summed up the case for the Suffragists as follows:

I wish to state first—she said—as the others have stated, that we proceeded quietly down the street opposite the White House with our banners; that we intended to keep marching; that our progress was halted by the police, not the crowd. There was no interference on the part of the crowd until after the police had arrested us and turned their backs on the crowd. Our contention is as others have stated that the presence of the crowd there was caused by the action of the police and the previous announcement of the police that they would arrest the pickets, and not by our action which was entirely legal.

In the second place I wish to call your attention to the fact that there is no law whatever against our carrying banners through the streets of Washington, or in front of the White House. It has been stated that we were directed by the police not to carry banners before the White House, not to picket at the White House. That is absolutely untrue. We have received only one instruction from the chief of police and that was delivered by Major Pullman in person. He said that we must not carry banners outside of Headquarters. We have had no other communication on this subject since that time.

We, of course, realized that that was an extraordinary direction, because I don’t think it was ever told an organization that it could not propagate its views, and we proceeded naturally to assume that Major Pullman would not carry out that order in action because he would not be able to sustain it in any just court.