Suffragist of the Month: Doris Stevens

Few present-day Americans know about the history of the Occoquan Workhouse and the historic Night of Terror in 1917 that marked the turning point in the suffrage movement. One of the reasons historians and activists know anything about the circumstances facing those women that night is because Doris Stevens wrote it down. Her book, Jailed for Freedom, is a first hand account of the suffragists’ imprisonment and the fallout thereafter. Published in 1920, the book revealed the bravery displayed by the activists in the face of brutal treatment at the hands of the government. Her work is the definitive memoir of that moment in American history.

Doris Stevens was born in Omaha, Nebraska. A musician, she financed her degree from Oberlin College with music lessons. After graduating in 1911, she became a teacher, like many of her fellow suffragists. She turned her focus to voting rights for women in 1913 when she helped form the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage (CUWS) along with , and handful of other avid organizers.

In 1914 Stevens moved west, rallying women across the nation to the cause of suffrage, which culminated in California in 1915. Stevens moved to Washington, DC in time for the 1917 demonstrations in front of the White House. Stevens was arrested along with many fellow protesters. Recalling the scene in Jailed for Freedom she writes “An intense silence fell upon the watchers, as they saw not only younger women, but white-haired grandmothers hoisted before the public gaze into the crowded patrol, their heads erect, their eyes a little moist and their frail hands holding tightly to the banner until wrested from them by superior brute force.”

After her release from prison, Stevens continued working for the CUWS (which became the National Women’s Party in 1916).  She served in many capacities as a leader in the movement until ratification of the 19th Amendment in August 1920. After the vote was won, Stevens continued her efforts for the cause of women’s rights and cultivated a wide circle of artist friends in New York City including Theodore Dreiser and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Doris Stevens died of a stroke on March 22, 1963.

Evidence of her eloquence, passion, and understanding of the pivotal movement in which she partook may be found in the opening pages of Jailed for Freedom, written to Alice Paul, “through whose brilliant and devoted leadership the women of America have been able to consummate with gladness and gallant courage their long struggle for political liberty, this book is affectionately dedicated.”

Note: On the 19th day of each month Lorton Patch recognizes a Suffragist of the Month in honor of the 19th Amendment and the Turning Point Suffragists Memorial in Occoquan Regional Park.