Last week's furor over the eviction of two women from the State of the Union address is reminiscent of a long-forgotten controversy when women's suffrage took center stage during Woodrow Wilson's 1916 speech.

Wilson had no intention of addressing women's suffrage. But militant suffragists from the National Woman's Party, led by Swarthmore graduate Alice Paul, had other plans. The NWP had campaigned vigorously against Wilson and the Democrats in 1916 because they failed to support a suffrage constitutional amendment.

Not only did Wilson narrowly win reelection, but the NWP suffered the untimely death of one of its best-known young speakers, the flamboyant activist Inez Milholland, who had collapsed at a campaign rally after shouting out a soon-to-be famous battle cry against Wilson. Paul's strong instinct for political theater led her to capitalize on the publicity surrounding Milholland.

On Dec. 5, six NWP members sat in the front row of the House gallery, waiting for Wilson's expected appeal for greater voting rights for men in Puerto Rico. Suddenly, they leapt to their feet and unfurled a large banner that had been hidden under their clothes. It echoed Milholland's final battle cry: "Mr. President: What will you do for woman suffrage?"

The Capitol Police hurried to the gallery to arrest the demonstrators, but they were blocked by a crowd of NWP supporters and eventually abandoned the effort. Wilson, smiling slightly, caught only a glimpse of the offending banner before it was torn down. The New York Times later scoffed that "no aggregation of male minds... would ever think of anything so supremely small and cheap."

Despite mockery and opposition, Paul believed it was essential to pressure Wilson on suffrage. In early January 1917, she sent her first wave of suffrage pickets to stand silently before the White House, where they would remain for most of the year. Wilson could not leave the Oval Office for his daily automobile ride without facing the demand: "Mr. President: What will you do for woman suffrage?"

Grudging toleration of these "Silent Sentinels" evaporated in the hysteria that enveloped the nation after Wilson took the nation to war in April. Dissent became suspect, and protesters became enemies of the state. Suffrage pickets who refused to cease their demonstrations were soon imprisoned.

Castigated by the press, beaten and chased by mobs as pro-German traitors, and abandoned by their sisters in the mainstream suffrage organization, the militants struggled to keep suffrage in the public eye. By November 1917, Paul was in solitary confinement in a psychiatric prison ward, suffering the horrors of forcible feeding as she led a hunger strike. After federal court intervention, all the prisoners were released, and their convictions later overturned. Three years later, Paul and millions of other American women would finally have the right to vote.

Muzzling dissent has a surprisingly long history in a nation that presses commitment to freedom of expression. But that history also teaches us that the government cannot keep silent forever a message whose time has come. The real lesson may be that of another nonviolent protester, Mohandas Gandhi, when he described the course of movements for social justice: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Catherine Lanctot is a professor at of law at Villanova University. Email to: lanctot@law.villanova.edu

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer

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