Inspiring Story, Inspiring Who Am I.

Not much today, just an inspirational story and what I think is an amazing woman featured in today's Who Am I? Here is the inspirational story:

http://highschoolsports.oregonlive.com/news/article/-844079563475605981/track-and-field-for-glencoes-alfredo-castaneda-a-new-season-and-new-challenges/

Comments are appreciated about either the above story or today's Who Am I. Remember when you comment on the later don't mention names.

Today's Who Am I?

Yesterday's was Helen (Nellie) Herron Taft. Can you guess today's, email answers to williamjdah@aol.com.

I was born in 1885 in New Jersey also dying there in 1977. I was the first born of four children to a banker dad. As Hixsite Quakers, our family believed in gender equality, education for women, and working for the betterment of society. My mom often brought me to suffrage meetings. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 1the age of 16. While at college my father contracted pneumonia and died suddenly. I conducted graduate work at the what is now Columbia University and received a Master of Arts degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. That fall I went to England where I studied social work . I went back to the states and eventually received a PHD in sociology. When in England I met the founder of the British suffrage movement who advocated “taking the woman’s movement to the streets.” I participated in many radical protests for woman suffrage, including hunger strikes and even three prison terms. When both Lucy and I ended up in the states we approached the National American Woman Suffrage Association, having decided to join forces toward a constitutional amendment by directly lobbying congressmen. We were allowed to take over the NAWSA Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C., but had no office, no budget and few supporters. I was only 26 but drew on my England experiences and organized the largest parade ever seen -- a spectacle unparalleled in the nation's political capitol. It wasn the eve of President Wilson’s inauguration. About 8,000 college, professional, middle- and working-class women dressed in white suffragist costumes marched in units with banners and floats down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House. The goal was to gather at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall. The crowd was estimated at half a million people, with many verbally harassing us while police stood by. Troops finally had to be called to restore order and help us get to our destination. The parade generated more publicity than I hoped for. Newspapers carried articles for weeks, with politicians demanding investigations into police practices in Washington, and commentaries on the bystanders. The publicity opened the door for the Congressional Committee to lobby congressmen, and the president. This led to our meeting with President Wilson three times in a month. I established the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CUWS), sanctioned by NAWSA and dedicated to achieving the federal amendment. By June, the Senate Committee on Women's Suffrage reported favorably on the amendment and senators prepared to debate the issue for the first time since 1887. I founded the Woman's Party for women in western states who had the vote already. Then a merger led to the creation of the National Woman’s Party under my leadership. I called a halt to any more pleading for the right to vote -- instead mounting an even more militaristic political campaign demanding passage of the women's suffrage amendment, which I named the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. After a long picketing gig I was placed in solitary confinement for two weeks and immediately began a hunger strike. Unable to walk on my release from prison, I was taken to the prison hospital. Then the prison officials put me in the "psychopathic" ward, hoping to discredit me as insane. They deprived me of sleep -- I had an electric light, directed at my face, turned on briefly every hour, every night. And they continually threatened to transfer me to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a notorious asylum in Washington, D.C., as suffering a "mania of persecution." The hell with them I said and refused to eat. During the last week of my 22-day hunger strike, the doctors brutally forced a tube into my nose and down my throat, pouring liquids into my stomach, three times a day for three weeks. Despite the pain and illness this caused, I refused to end the hunger strike. One physician reported: "[She has] a spirit like Joan of Arc, and it is useless to try to change it. She will die but she will never give up."
On what became known as the Night of Terror at the Workhouse, it was written:

"Under orders from the superintendent as many as forty guards with clubs went on a rampage, brutalizing thirty-three jailed women. They beat Lucy , chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, and left her there for the night. They hurled Dora into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed, and knocked her out cold. I was her cellmate and believed Dora Lewis to be dead, suffered a heart attack. According to affidavits, other
women were grabbed, dragged, beaten, choked, slammed, pinched, twisted, and kicked."

Newspapers across the country ran articles about the incident angering many and creating more support. With mounting public pressure, the government released all of us. I served five weeks. A Court of Appeals overturned all our convictions. Congress convened a week after the we were released and the House set a date to vote on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. President Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The next day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment. The Senate didn't vote until October, and it failed by two votes. We kept pressure on the politicians with front-page news -- burning President Wilson's speeches at public monuments, and burning "watchfires" in front of the White House, Senate and other federal sites. Hundreds more women were arrested, conducting hunger strikes while incarcerated. The NWP urged women voters and male supporters to vote against anti-suffrage senators up for election that fall. The following election left Congress with mostly pro-suffrage members. The House reaffirmed its vote and the Senate passed the amendment by one vote. Women voted for the first time in the 1920 presidential election. The fight took 72 years -- spanning two centuries, 18 presidencies, and three wars. I went on to study law. I still had unfinished business, to "remove all remaining forms of the subjection of women." The following year I introduced the first Equal Rights Amendment: "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." I continued to re-introduce the ERA for many years -- finally getting it through Congress in 1970. When World War II broke out, in September 1939 in Europe, the headquarters of an organization I founded became a refuge for people escaping the Nazi terror. I helped them find American sponsors, get passports and travel safely to the U.S. I said that if women had helped to end the first World War, the second one would not have been necessary. I never married, committing to a life of causes. Who Am I?