[BELL RINGS]

- Tane West here with the Alice Paul Institute for another installation of our virtual tour. Between the first arrests in 1917 and the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, police arrested some 500 suffragists, 168 of which served time in jail or prison at least once when they refused to admit guilt and pay the $5 fee for obstructing traffic. As months of these arrests went by, sentences grew longer, and jailers and the treatment of these women grew harsher.

The culmination of this took place on November 15, 1917, which the suffragists dubbed The Night of Terror. The superintendent at the Occoquan Workhouse, irritated by the returning women, brought dozens of extra guards on shift. They beat and tortured the women brought in that night.

Not even a year later, a group of women being released were threatened by another superintendent, stating that if he saw them again, he would have a far worse place fixed up for them. He kept his word, and in August of 1918, a group of women were sent to a former men's workhouse. Located in a swamp, it had been declared unfit for habitation in 1909. The women described it as a hellhole and all became ill from the water.

All of this was happening on top of holding hunger strikes as they should have been treated as political prisoners and were not. Painful force feedings took place sometimes three times a day. Despite these conditions, the women persevered and continued their fight. After release from jail, Katherine Rolston Fisher gave a speech at a meeting honoring the released women, stating, "Five of us have recently come out from the workhouse in the world."

A great change? Not so much of a change for women, disenfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not free. Disenfranchisement is the prison of women's power and spirit.