Lucy Burns
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- For other people named Burns, see Burns (disambiguation).
Lucy Burns (July 28, 1879-December 22, 1966) was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a close friend of Alice Paul. Together, they formed the National Woman's Party.
Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Irish Catholic family. She was a gifted student and attended university at Vassar College and Yale University before becoming an English teacher. In 1906 at age twenty-seven she moved to Germany to resume her studies in language. She returned to New York in 1908 to work as a teacher again. Three years later Burns moved to the United Kingdom, where she graduated from Oxford University.
She met Paul in England after becoming a member of the Women's Social and Political Union, an organization dedicated to fighting for women's rights in the United Kingdom. Burns and Paul were among those sent to jail for protesting. The feminist struggle for equality and woman's suffrage in the UK inspired Burns and Paul to continue the fight on their return to the United States. They joined the National American Women Suffrage Association as its Congressional lobbyists. However, they eventually split from NAWSA in a dispute over tactics and, in 1913 formed the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage.
Suffrage historian Eleanor Clift compares the partnership of Paul and Burns to that of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She notes that they "were opposites in appearance and temperament... [w]hereas Paul appeared fragile, Burns was tall and curvaceous, the picture of vigorous health... unlike Paul, who was uncompromising and hard to get along with, Burns was pliable and willing to negotiate. Paul was the militant; Burns, the diplomat.
Three years later, dissatisfied with the progress of congressional lobbying, they formed the National Woman's Party (NWP). They were feared and despised by many men of the era, and were opposed by conservative women as well as by more conservative suffragettes who advocated less militant tactics. However, Burns and Paul were committed to direct action in fighting for women's rights, particularly the right to vote. The National Woman's Party led dozens of women to picket the White House in Washington, D.C. beginning in 1916. The NWP was not a political party per se and did not run candidates for office. A bi-partisan organization, it directed its attacks at the office of the President of the United States, in this case, Woodrow Wilson. Burns also opposed World War I, seeing it as a war led by powerful men that resulted in young men being drafted and giving their lives with little free will.
Burns was arrested while picketing the White House and went to jail several times. In jail, Burns joined Alice Paul and many other women in hunger strikes, to demonstrate their commitment to their cause, claiming that they were political prisoners. Burns was force-fed and possibly tortured, as was Paul. Clift recounts that the force feeding of Lucy Burns required "five people to hold her down, and when she refused to open her mouth, they shoved the feeding tube up her nostril." [1] Of the well-known suffragists of the era, Burns spent the most time in jail.
After women gained the right to vote in the United States, Burns retired from political life. She died on December 22, 1966.
In 2004, HBO Films broadcast "Iron Jawed Angels", chronicling the struggle of Lucy Burns, Alice Paul and other suffragists. Burns was portrayed by Australian actress Frances O'Connor.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Clift, Eleanor. Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2003. page 152.
