WAPUSH Wednesday Series
Welcome to WAPUSH Wednesday—our newest social media series! Each week, we will highlight incredible women of the National Women's Party and publish a short biography on each individual. Check out our Instagram @womensapushistory for more!
Bibliography—Katherine Morey
Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Birth Records, 1840-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
The Boston Globe. "Many 'Antis' Stand on Sidewalks Flaunting Red Petals." May 2, 1914.
The Boston Globe. "Militants Think Their Jail Treatment 'Lovely.'" February 27, 1919.
The Boston Globe. "Mrs. Agnes Morey Dies in Brookline." March 29, 1924.
The Boston Globe. "National Suffrage Near." November 14, 1916.
The Boston Globe. "Table Gossip." May 1, 1921.
Boston Post. "National Women's Party Picks Officers." March 4, 1921.
The Butte Daily Post. "Woman's Vote for Woman Please of Envoys." May 6, 1916.
The Butte Daily Post. "Woman's Vote for Woman Their Plea." May 6, 1916.
Evening Express. "Will Wed Woman's Party Chairman: Former Portlander Met His Fiancee in Washington." May 23, 1921.
Evening Star. "Assisting in Arranging for Suffrage Demonstration at White House March 4." February 18, 1917.
Evening Star. "Suffragists to Launch War-time Policy Here." February 18, 1917.
Lunardini, Christine. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the national Woman's Party, 1910--1928, New York University, 2000.
Miss Katharine Morey, Massachusetts state chairman for the National Woman's Party, who is in charge of introducing the Woman's Party Bill for Equal Rights at the present session of the Legislature which convened January 3rd. 1916. Photograph. Accessed July 9, 2024. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mnwp.27501_275010/.
Morey, Katherine. "Suffragists Submit to Jail Sentence for Good of Cause." The Washington Herald, June 29, 1917.
———. "Why Must a Woman's Name Change with her Marriage?" The Boston Globe, September 21, 1924.
The News-Journal (Lancaster, PA). "To the Envoys of Russia." July 19, 1917.
The Springfield Daily Republican. "Seeking Equal Rights for 10,000,000 Women." January 30, 1924.
Stevens, Doris, and Angela P. Dodson. Jailed for Freedom : a First-person Account of the Militant Fight for Women's Rights. 100th ed. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2020.
Time Union. "Ousted From Jail, Suffragists Indignant." February 27, 1919.
The Topeka Daily Capital. "Kansas Women Watching Progress of Amendment." July 20, 1919.
The Topeka State Journal. "Start It in Kan.: Women Will Move Here to Organize New Party." April 12, 1916.
The Washington Herald. "Pickets Go to Jail." June 29, 1917.
The Washington Herald. "Suffragists Submit to Jail Sentence for Good of Cause." June 29, 1917.
The Wichita Eagle. "Adopted Kansas as Home." April 14, 1916.
Bibliography—Maria Stewart
“Maria W. Stewart (U.S. National Park Service).” Accessed September 17, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/people/maria-w-stewart.htm.
Rycenga, Jennifer. “Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought 1.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 26, no. 1 (January 2024): 1–4.
https://www.proquest.com/genderwatch/docview/2926685755/citation/3F9381E1FBD84584PQ/7
“The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics - Document - Gale Academic OneFile.” Accessed September 17, 2024. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA349224522&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00091774&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=mlin_oweb&isGeoAuthType=true&aty=geo.
Alice Paul (10/9)
Leader of the National Women’s Party (NWP)
Alice Paul was born on January 11th, 1885 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey to a deeply religious Quaker family. Gender equality was a central belief of their religion and thus a social norm amongst Quakers. Alice graduated at the top of her class in high school, and then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Swarthmore College in 1905. An exceptional scholar, Alice completed several graduate degrees. While continuing her graduate studies in England, Alice became involved with the British women’s suffrage movement that was led by Emaline and Christabel Pankhurst. Their movement utilized militant tactics such as breaking windows and heckling. Alice, and numerous other women who engaged in these measures, were repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. While in prison, they would begin hunger strikes and refuse to eat, which usually resulted in being force-fed.
In 1910, Alice Paul returned to America and joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Although NAWSA was targeting state delegations, Alice wanted to redirect the movement to focus on a constitutional amendment. Alice and her colleague Lucy Burns organized an extensive parade in Washington D.C. for thousands of women on March 3rd, 1913. Dressed in Greek attire, Inez Milholland, who was a well known and respected activist, led this march on a white horse. Those who participated in this suffrage parade were heckled and beaten while police watched from the sidelines.
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns broke away from NAWSA in 1916 and formed the National Women’s Party (NWP). In 1917, members of the NWP began their civil disobedience tactic of silently protesting outside of the White House. These women became known as the ‘Silent Sentinels.’ The NWP continued to picket the White House even after the U.S. entered World War I, which raised controversy. Although these protests were legal, police began arresting the Silent Sentinels under the charge of ‘obstructing traffic.’ Alice and the suffragists demanded to be treated as political prisoners, and when this request was ignored, they began a hunger strike. The women were brutally force fed, beaten, and held in unsanitary conditions in prison. As news about the treatment in prison reached the public, people were horrified and demanded the women be released.
By the end of 1917, the U.S. government voted to pass the 19th Amendment to grant women the right to vote. The amendment needed a 3/4ths vote in order to pass, and received exactly that. The NWP, finally having achieved their goal, celebrated this victory by sewing a star for each ratification onto their Silent Sentinel banners. However, Alice Paul did not feel that the fight for equality was over. In 1923, after earning three law degrees, she wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, which has yet to be ratified. Alice extended her efforts to women across the world and founded the World Women’s Party, followed by the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 1945.
Alice Paul died at age 92 on July 9th, 1977 in Moorestown, New Jersey, and she was buried in a Quaker cemetery in Cinnaminson, New Jersey. The Alice Paul Institute (API), now known as the Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice, was founded in 1985 to honor her lifelong fight for equality and lasting impact years later. Alice Paul will forever be remembered for her extraordinary achievements as a feminist, suffragist, and political strategist.
Edith Ainge (10/16)
Treasurer and National Council Member for the National Woman’s Party
Edith Ainge was a longtime suffragist with the National Woman’s Party. She was born in England on September 10, 1873, and later immigrated to North America with her family. They originally landed in Quebec, Canada on May 21, 1883, but soon settled in Jamestown, NY. Edith was the oldest of eight siblings and lived her entire life in upstate New York.
Ainge was actively involved with the suffrage movement before the NWP was officially formed. She opened and chaired a suffrage chapter in Jamestown in 1914 and led the local delegation that received the suffrage torch of liberty in July 1915. Ainge was in charge of the Buffalo NWP headquarters that opened in July 1917.
On several occasions, Ainge was arrested for picketing outside the White House with the NWP. She was jailed for 60 days at the Occoquan Workhouse in September 1917 and ten days in August 1918. Her subsequent arrests in January and February 1919 followed “watchfire for freedom” demonstrations in which she and others burned President Wilson’s speeches and statuettes in an urn outside the White House. Ainge was part of the NWP’s “Prison Special” tour in 1919 to drum up nationwide support for the 19th Amendment.
Her commitment to the suffrage movement defined her career; she listed her occupation in the 1920 U.S. Census as “suffragist organizing” and was even called “the Betsy Ross of the National Woman’s Party” after she was photographed sewing a star onto the suffrage flag following Missouri’s ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Following the adoption of the 19th Amendment, Ainge focused on the NWP’s efforts to pass the ERA. She was one of 500 delegates to the NWP convention in Washington D.C. in February 1921. The following year, she was elected treasurer of the NWP and attended the NWP conference in November 1922 and the Seneca Falls convention in July 1923 where the ERA proposed by Alice Paul was unanimously adopted. Ainge and a delegation from the NWP met with President Coolidge on November 17, 1923, to lobby for his support of the ERA. Following nationwide campaigns for ERA ratification, Ainge was one of several NWP members to give speeches on street corners in D.C. on the eve of President Coolidge’s second inauguration in March 1925 to remind him and the Republican Party of their commitment to the amendment. She again returned to D.C. in 1926 for the NWP’s “Women in Congress” meeting advocating for more women in politics. During the six-year anniversary celebrations for the 19th Amendment, Ainge told the press “We want equal rights with men in every field. We favor a woman for president. At least half the cabinet should be women. We should like to have equal numbers of men and women in Congress.”
At an NWP convention in December 1929, Ainge was nominated for a two-year term to the NWP’s national council. Delegates at the convention endorsed an international contract that would allow women to retain their nationality independent of their husband’s. When this proposal was overlooked at The Hague Conference in April 1930, Ainge was part of a delegation of women who urged President Hoover to withdraw U.S. representatives from the conference, which he did not do.
Ainge was one of twenty women marshals who processed behind Alva Belmont’s coffin at her funeral on February 12, 1933, in NYC. She carried a banner specifically requested by Alva which read “Failure Is Impossible.” Ainge herself passed away on October 25, 1948, at the age of 75. Her gravestone in Jamestown, NY simply reads “Suffrage Leader.”
Katherine Morey (09/18)
Suffragist, Pacifist, Leader of the National Woman’s Party in Massachusetts
Written by Serene Williams, teachwapush.org
Katherine Morey was a longtime activist with the National Woman’s Party who participated in both state and national level campaigns. Born in 1891, she was a descendant of Abner Hosmer, who was notable as the second man to die in the Revolutionary War. A longtime resident of Brookline, Massachusetts, her mother, Agnes Morey, was also a member of the National Woman’s Party and went to prison alongside her daughter during World War I.
In 1914, Katherine participated in a march alongside thousands of women in Boston on behalf of women’s suffrage. By 1916, she belonged to the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and eventually served as Massachusetts state chairman for the National Woman’s Party. That year, she participated in a campaign to encourage women to move to western states that had already enfranchised women to increase the number of women participating in politics. Morey renounced her Massachusetts citizenship and wrote to the Governor of Kansas to say she would become a citizen of that state because women in Kansas could vote during the 1916 presidential campaign. Morey worked directly with notable suffragist Harriet Stanton Blatch on the Kansas campaign.
In February 1917, Morey helped organize a public event around the White House to call attention to President Wilson about the need for women to have the right to vote. At this protest, women were organized in half–those from states where women could vote and those from states where women did not have voting rights. Morey was in charge of organizing the women from the states without women’s suffrage.
In 1917, Morey protested outside the White House during the First World War. Morey had several run-ins with the law as a result of her suffrage work. In June of 1917, she and Lucy Burns were the first picketers to be arrested and she served three days in jail. In February 1919, Morey was arrested in Boston during a protest scheduled to take place when President Woodrow Wilson returned from Europe prompting world peace. Morey carried the American flag in this protest and she was sentenced to eight days at the Charles St. Jail. Also that year, Morey went to jail over refusing to pay fines for picketing and became visibly ill, losing 12 pounds.
Morey continued to be involved with the National Woman’s Party after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. In the mid-1920s, she worked on campaigns to secure equal pay for female teachers, support the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, and ensure women had access to serving on juries. Morey married Herbert K. Pinkham in 1921 and after this marriage she continued to use her maiden name as she saw fit and remained politically active. For example, in 1924 she published an essay in the Boston Globe arguing women should be encouraged to keep their own name after they marry. Although Morey is not widely known today, during the late 1910s and early 1920s, she played a pivotal role in expanding rights for women throughout the United States.
Maria Stewart (10/2)
Maria Stewart
Orator, Abolitionist, and Teacher
Written by Clara Robinson
Maria Stewart was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1803. Although she was born free, Stewart was orphaned at the age of 5 and became an indentured servant until age 15. She then moved to Boston and continued to work as a domestic servant. Stewart’s domestic work did not allow her the flexibility to pursue an education, so she sought out a career as a writer and public speaker instead. Stewart was a pioneer of the intersection of Black feminism and insurrectionist ethics. Insurrectionist ethics is a philosophy that promotes radical social change as a method of liberating an oppressed population. Stewart was particularly passionate about the suppression of educational opportunities for African Americans and women, arguing for the implementation of intellectual societies designated solely for women and people of African descent. In 1832, Stewart delivered a speech at Franklin Hall in Washington, D.C., which is recognized as one of the first recorded examples of an American woman speaking in public. In her speech, Stewart stated that it was God’s will for Black women to become the leaders of the fight against oppression. When she moved to New York in 1834, Stewart began teaching through a Black Female Literary Society. A newly enacted law in 1878 granted Stewart possession of a pension from her late husband’s war service. She used this money to finally begin publishing her writing and speeches.
Bibliography—Alice Paul
“About Alice Paul – Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice.” Accessed October 2, 2024.
https://www.alicepaul.org/about-alice-paul/.
“Alice Paul - Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument (U.S. National Park
Service).” https://www.nps.gov/bepa/learn/alice-paul.htm
Fritz, Jan Marie. "Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977)." Clinical Sociology Review 18, no. 1 (2023). Gale Academic OneFile https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A761299068/AONE?u=mlin_oweb&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=db00bc85
Bibliography—Edith Ainge
Ancestry.com. “1900 United States Federal Census.” Accessed July 13, 2024.
Ancestry.com. “1920 United States Federal Census.” Accessed July 13, 2024.
Ancestry.com. “Canada, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 for Edeth Ainge.” Accessed July 13, 2024.
Buffalo Courier. “Her Ardor Leads To Imprisonment - Jamestown Young Woman, White House Picket, Under Sentence.” September 8, 1917.
Buffalo Courier. “Jail Sentences for 26 Suffs Who Defied Police.” August 16, 1918.
Cassidy, Tina. Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow
Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote, 2019, Page 219
Chicago Daily Tribune. “Women to Urge Equal Rights on Inaugural Eve.” March 1, 1925.
Daily News. “Vanguard.” February 7, 1921.
Kirksville Daily Express. “Anniversary of Suffrage for Women - Leaders Are Confident of New Political Achievements.” August 26, 1926.
New York Tribune. “Suffragists Burn Effigy of President.” February 10, 1919.
New York Tribune. “Woman’s Party Chiefs Gather in Washington for National Rally.” November 6, 1922.
The Binghamton Press. “Suffragists Have Modern Betsy Ross.” July 18, 1919.
The Buffalo News. “Jamestown Suffragists Open Headquarters.” February 7, 1914.
The Buffalo News. “National Woman’s Party Establishes Here.” July 14, 1917.
The Buffalo Times. “Suffrage Torch in Salamanca.” July 24, 1915.
The New York Times. “Belmont Funeral To Be Held Today.” February 12, 1933.
The New York Times. “Many State Women to Attend Meeting.” February 7, 1921.
The New York Times. “Plan Equal Rights Fight: Woman’s Party Delegation Will Visit Coolidge Nov. 17.” November 5, 1923.
The New York Times. “Woman’s Party Meeting: Mrs. Belmont Completes $146,000 Gift for Headquarters.” June 23, 1922.
The New York Times. “Women Get $300,000 For Campaign Fund.” July 16, 1923.
The New York Times. “Women Open Fight For Equal Rights.” July 21, 1923.
The New York Times. “Women Protest Ban at The Hague.” April 10, 1930.
The San Francisco Examiner. “Suffragists’ Prison Train Due Friday.” February 23, 1919.
The Windsor Star. “Police Arrest Four Prominent Suffrage Workers.” January 3, 1919.