The Government Orders Our Banners Destroyed Because They Tell the Truth

Marie Jenney Howe and Paula Jakobi, Sept 1917

“The government orders our banners destroyed because they tell the truth”

-suffrage banner, August 17, 1917

“Of course it was embarrassing. We meant it to be. The truth must be told at all costs. This was no time for manners.”

-Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom (93).

-The New York Call, June 29, 1917

I will provide the immediate historical context for the events portrayed in Howe and Jakobi’s play. For a more complete history of the suffrage movement and Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party (NWP), please consult the sources in my bibliography.

In 1914, Alice Paul left the constraints of NAWSA to form the radical Congressional Union (CU) and embarked on an energetic, newsworthy, militant campaign (Ryan 28). Paul’s political theory stemmed from a single premise: that “electoral survival determines political behaviour” (Graham 666). Graham states that “From that departure point, she reasoned that politicians could be convinced of the political expediency of suffrage in less time than it would take to convert each congressman to the principle of woman suffrage” (666). Thus, she set in motion a powerful publicity campaign to “sell” the suffrage issue to Americans and to coerce politicians to support a federal suffrage amendment (666). She

“‘staged scenes,’ introducing tactics and splash not found in the movement since its inception. Always calling the newspapers ahead of time, she organized demonstrations on a grand scale with stirring songs and pageantry. The Union adopted colours—purple, white, and gold—held parades with women dressed in white carrying tri-coloured banners, and established a weekly publication, The Suffragist” (Ryan 28).

In December of 1916, frustrated by the continued lack of action on the part of Woodrow Wilson, the suffragists formulated a new plan (Graham 667). Harriot Stanton Blatch delivered this “ringing call for action”:

“We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during the last four years with great deputations, with small deputations. We have shown the interest all over the country in self-government for women-something that the President as a great Democrat ought to understand and respond to instantly. Yet he tells us to-day that … we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before did the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it lies to-day in the hands of President Wilson. […]

Yet to-day he tells us that we must wait more-and more. We can't organize bigger and more influential deputations. We can't organize bigger processions. We can't, women, do anything more in that line. We have got to take a new departure. We have got to keep the question before him all the time…We have got to bring to the President individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that great numbers of women want to be free, will be free, and want to know what he is going to do about it. Won't you come and join us in standing day after day at the gates of the White House with banners asking, `What will you do, Mr. President, for one-half the people of this nation?' Stand there as sentinels sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self- government-silent sentinels” (Stevens e-text 58-59).

The NWP picketing campaign at the White House began on the 10th of January, 1917 (Graham 667). The women stood silently at the gates, holding banners that called for women’s suffrage and quoted statements from Woodrow Wilson on humanity’s need for freedom and democracy. At first, President Wilson was courteous, if somewhat patronizing, to the suffragists (667). However, after the United States declared war on Germany, his attitude, and that of many other Americans changed (667). The women were seen as unpatriotic for continuing to picket during wartime and for using Wilson’s war speeches on their banners (Ryan 29).

In June, after six months of uneventful picketing, police began to arrest the picketers, and attacks by heckling crowds became a regular event (Ryan 29). On June 22nd, the police arrested Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey for obstructing the sidewalk, and ordered that picketing of the White House cease (Graham 668). Burns and Morey were released on their own recognizance (Stevens 76). The next day, more arrests were made, again on the charge of “obstructing the traffic” (76). On June 26th, six women were tried in the police court of the District of Columbia (Clift 131). They were found guilty of obstructing traffic, and were given the choice of a $25 fine or 3 days in a DC jail for what the court called “unpatriotic, almost treasonable behaviour” (131). The women refused to pay the fine, and served their 3 days in jail (Stevens 77). On July 4, 1917, Independence Day, eleven women were arrested with banner that read “Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed” (77). They were once again charged with “obstructing the traffic” and were sentenced to a $25 fine or 3 days in jail (132). On Bastille Day, July 14, sixteen women were arrested and sentenced to 60 days in the Occoquan workhouse in Virginia (132). Alice Paul took advantage of the situation and published leaked accounts of the terrible conditions in the workhouse (134). The President realized he had lost the public relations battle, and pardoned the suffragists on July 19 (134). The women returned to the picket lines, carrying a banner that read, “We ask not pardon for ourselves but justice for all American women” (135). On August 14th, women arrived at the White House bearing a banner that read,

“Kaiser Wilson. Have you forgotten how you sympathized with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? 20 000 000 American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye” (Stevens 88).

An angry mob of sailors and government workers attacked the suffragists (673). The next day, rioting continued; the NWP headquarters was vandalized, several pickets were injured, and over $1000 in damage was caused (673). The police made no effort to stop the riots and arrest any members of the mob, although six pickets were arrested for obstructing traffic (673). The riots continued for four more days (674). Daily, police passed by the angry mob to arrest the pickets (674). These women were given lengthy sentences at the Occoquan workhouse (Stevens 91). As the fall progressed, the arrests continued, and suffragists were given longer and longer sentences (Graham 676). On September 7th, Dudley Field Malone, one of Woodrow Wilson’s best friends and political backers, resigned as Collector of the Port of New York (Clift 141). He had previously campaigned in the West, urging women to re-elect Wilson, on the promise that there would be a federal suffrage amendment (141). Instead, claimed Malone, Wilson dealt out mass arrests on “trumped-up charges”, and jailed women illegally under terrible conditions (141). It is in this context that Marie Jenney Howe and Paula Jakobi wrote their satire of the events of the summer of 1917, “Telling the Truth at the White House.” The NWP women continued to picket, hold protests, and suffer arrests and attacks until the suffrage amendment passed on June 4, 1919 (Stevens 182).

Sections: Marie Jenney Howe and Heterodoxy

Paula Jakobi

Heterodoxy and Suffrage

Other Works by Howe and Jakobi

Marie Jenney Howe and Heterodoxy

Marie Jenney Howe was born on December 26, 1870 in Syracuse, New York (Adickes 59). Her parents belonged to old and prosperous New York families (59). In 1893, she attended the Unitarian Theological Seminary in Meadville, Pennsylvania (59). Because of her good looks, the townspeople could not take her ambition to become a minister seriously (59). One observer relates,

“There were other women studying at the school, but Miss Jenney was different. She was too beautiful to be a minister…Only a man could explain such a beautiful girl at a theological seminary. Women did not go in for careers….and saving souls was a man’s job. It seemed absurd for her to go into the ministry” (Schwarz 8).

One of the skeptics was Frederic C. Howe, a law student returning home to Syracuse for a visit (Adickes 59). On his first meeting with her, he informed her that Johns Hopkins, his school, did not admit women and he hoped it never would (Schwarz 8). He had grown up with the belief that a woman’s proper place was in the home (Adickes 59). Thus, he was surprised and intrigued to find that, to Marie Jenney, “life was not a man’s thing, it was a human thing. It was to be enjoyed by women as it was by men” (Schwartz 9). Although their first meeting seems acrimonious, they kept up a correspondence even after she graduated in 1897, and became the assistant to another woman minister, Mary A. Sanford (Adickes 59). In 1904, Marie gave up the ministry to marry Frederic Howe (60). He remained ambivalent about women’s rights even after their marriage (Adickes 91). He once wrote,

“As to women, I followed the changing mores. I spoke for women’s suffrage without much wanting it. And I urged freedom for women without liking it. My mind gave way, but not my instincts…I hated privilege in the world of economics; I chose it in my own home” (Schwarz 10).

The couple moved to New York in 1910 and Frederic Howe became the Commissioner of Immigration (Adickes 60). Marie became active in the New York suffrage movement and the National Consumer’s League, a group of middle class women seeking to improve conditions for working women (60). She became the chair of the 25th Assembly District Division of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party, a branch of NAWSA, which became known as “the fighting twenty-fifth” under her leadership (60). She also founded the women’s club, Heterodoxy, described by here by Judith Schwarz:

“’There was a club called Heterodoxy for unorthodox women, women who did things and did them openly,’ wrote Mabel Dodge Luhan. Founded in 1912 by Unitarian minister Marie Jenney Howe in New York City's Greenwich Village, Heterodoxy was a unique gathering place for feminists, radicals, labor organizers, and professional women. Thirty to fifty women of the one hundred twenty known members usually met every other Saturday from September to May at Village restaurants until 1940 to debate such issues as women's rights, pacifism, birth control, revolutionary politics, and civil rights. […]

Members ranged in age from their twenties to their early sixties. Most were Anglo-Americans; one member was African American, and several members were Jewish or Irish. The women ranged from nudists and free-love advocates to lesbian couples, from oft-married heterosexuals to monogamous wives in lifelong relationships.

What held this ‘little band of willful women, the most unruly and individualistic females’ together for thirty years was their pride in the group's enormous range of personalities, interests, and occupations, and their common belief in suffrage. As Inez Haynes Irwin noted, the members ‘possessed minds startlingly free of prejudice. They were at home with ideas. All could talk; all could argue; all could listen” (“Heterodoxy”)

In the pre-war years, Heterodoxy included most of the major activists in political, social, and artistic movements (Adickes 33). Many of these women were economically independent (Schwarz 2). Also, most had some college education, at a time when college education was still unusual for women (55). Marie Jenney Howe was known to the women of Heterodoxy as the “mother”; she nurtured the women emotionally, intellectually, politically, while delighting in individuality (7). In 1920, the women of Heterodoxy presented her with an album with this inscription:

“To Queen Marie

Who gathers folk of warring creed

And holds them all as friends

Who ministers to social needs

And strives for social ends

All praise her for her deed

and the great gift she spends” (15)

The Heterodites formed an important part of the feminist movement in early 20th Century New York. Feminists believed in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes (Glenn 4). Feminists wanted the right to be independent from men and also from other women; they wanted “the right to realize personality” (Glenn 5). Unlike many suffragists, they believed in self-development rather than self-sacrifice in the family (Adickes 90). Also, modern feminists did not believe that all women shared a common set of concerns (Glenn 5). They acknowledged that women differed across class boundaries, and other boundaries of social location (5). Women who defined themselves as feminists were often advocates of radical trends, and worked in such fields as the labour movement, art, and politics (Adickes 89). Feminism overlapped with the suffrage movement, but also broadened its scope, and saw suffrage as a platform upon which to gain other benefits for women (90). In 1914, Marie Jenney Howe and other Heterodoxy members organized two feminist mass meetings (Schwarz 27). Howe stated her main focus for the meetings: “We’re sick of being specialized to sex…We intend simply to be ourselves, not just out little female selves, but our whole, big, human selves” (29). Rose Young spoke for virtually all of Heterodoxy when she said, “To me, feminism means that woman wants to develop her own womanhood. It means that she wants to push on to the finest, fullest, freest expression of herself. She wants to be an individual…The freeing of the individuality of woman does not mean original sin; it means the finding of her own soul” (25).

Marie Jenney Howe died of a heart attack, in her sleep, in 1934 (Schwarz 101). Heterodoxy’s surviving members immediately began organizing a memorial service, which was held at the home of Alice Duer Miller (101, 102). The Heterodites mourned the loss of her friendship, which they valued highly.