Monday, February 04, 2013
Doris Stevens: Jailed for Freedom
CHRONICLES OF CROTON’S BOHEMIA
Doris managed to make headlines by getting herself arrested at the gate of the home of French president, Gaston Doumergue in Rambouillet. Members of theNWP carried a banner reading, "We demand a treaty giving women their rights." French police arrested ten demonstrators, including Doris , for refusing to leave the area and for not having identity cards.
A militant feminist and leader in the women's suffrage movement, Doris Stevens was a keen eyewitness to the historic events that led up to the passage of the 19th Amendment. While the experiences were still fresh in her mind, she recorded them.
Her 1920 book, Jailed for Freedom, captures in minute detail the cruelties suffragists endured during the fight to achieve the vote. More than 500 women were arrested during the demonstrations. Her book performs an invaluable service by recording in an appendix the names of the 168 women who actually served prison sentences, with a brief biography of each. Their names deserve to be remembered.
Doris Stevens was born in Omaha , Neb. Oberlin College in Ohio United States
Activist
Doris Stevens joined with Doris Paul, Lucy Burns, Crystal Eastman and Dorothy Day to form the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, forerunner of the National Woman's Party (NWP), in 1913. She began to work as an organizer in Newport , R.I. , Denver and California San Francisco 's Golden Gate Park
Women's suffrage was gaining momentum. By 1915, a dozen states, all in the West, had given women the right to vote. The reason for this tilt toward equality was understandable: Western states had fewer women than men. Any state in which women had the right to vote would attract women to settle there and rectify the imbalance.
During the 1916 presidential campaign, Woodrow Wilson, running for a second term as president, promised peace but not suffrage. Charles Evans Hughes, his Republican challenger, promised suffrage but not peace. Doris was the California
Active in demonstrating for women's suffrage, she was arrested in Washington , D.C.
She was among the protesters arrested in New York City Peekskill Highland Place Wilson
In 1918, Malone’s appeal had won the release of a group of suffrage demonstrators who had been jailed for “obstructing the sidewalk” in front of the White House.
Later, Malone was invited to be co-counsel, with Clarence Darrow, in the defense of John T. Scopes, in the famous 1925 Tennessee
Second Marriage
Doris was divorced from Malone in Paris Portland , Maine , she married Jonathan Mitchell, a writer on the staff of the magazine The New Republic
Always a firebrand and a fighter, after helping to win the battle for women's suffrage in the United States , Doris turned her attention to the widespread discrimination against women in other countries.
In 1928, Doris and members of the NWP asked to be allowed to present a proposed Equal Rights Treaty at an international conference in France
Exhibiting bruises on her arms and wrists, she told reporters later, "It was a splendid battle, and we are proud of it."
Denying that they had planned to disrupt the conference, she explained that women were amateurs in diplomatic affairs.
"We see only the forthright, common-sense way to proceed," she added. "That, I think, is often an asset."
The next month in London
The Kellogg-Briand Treaty was eventually ratified by the U.S. Senate with only one dissenting vote. As it turned out, the pact never made a meaningful contribution to international order in the face of several undeclared wars of the 1930s--the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the German occupation of Austria
When the 6th Pan American Congress met in Havana in 1928, Doris was there. She succeeded in getting six Western Hemisphere countries to sponsor the inclusion of an Equal Rights Treaty on the agenda of the 7th Pan American Congress to be held in 1933 at Montevideo , Uruguay
An even more significant accomplishment was the 7th Congress's creation of an Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) to study the status of women, with Doris as its head. She would continue in this role until 1939.
Her efforts in directing the IACW resulted in the adoption of two equality treaties. Nineteen republics signed the Equal Nationality Convention, and four signed an Equal Rights Treaty--the first international agreements in history to equalize the status of men and women.
Like suffrage, the international equal rights movement was fraught with squabbles. In 1939, the NWP's rival, the League of Women Voters, succeeded in getting Doris ousted from the IACW. Instrumental in accomplishing this was Mollie Dewson, of the Democratic National Committee, who had influence with the State Department. A Democratic administration was in power, and Doris was a registered Republican. She was also accused of having been too cozy with some of the Latin American delegates.
In her place, the State Department announced the appointment to the ICAW of Mary Winslow, of the Women's Trade Union League. The excuse was that Stevens had not been chosen by the United States
League of Women Voters president Marguerite Wells was also instrumental in getting the IACW reorganized in 1940, with a Latin American woman appointed as chairman.
Doris Stevens was a member of the national council of the NWP from 1924 to 1948.
In addition to having written Jailed for Freedom, she designed the book, Paintings and Drawings of Jeannette Scott, 1863-1937. She also wrote a biographical sketch for this limited edition of 500 copies, privately printed in New Rochelle Syracuse University
The Mitchells continued to live in Croton, where she also pursued song writing. Five of her songs were premiered on New York radio station WINS, and introduced in concerts at Constitution Hall in Washington Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City McCook , Neb. , she is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland ,Maine Fairfield , Conn.
Doris Stevens’ papers were deposited in the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College Princeton University
