ELSIE VERVANE

Inscription

ELSIE VERVANE
PRESIDENT OF WOMEN’S MACHINIST
UNION, LOCATED TO RIGHT, AND
FOUR OTHER MEMBERS JAILED IN
WASHINGTON D.C. IN 1919 FOR
DEMANDING RIGHT TO VOTE.
WILLIAM G. POMEROY FOUNDATION 2021

In January 1919, Elsie Vervane, suffragist, munitions worker, and president of the Bridgeport, Connecticut Women’s Machinist Union, was arrested in Washington, D.C. for taking part in suffrage demonstrations organized by the National Woman’s Party (NWP). Four other Bridgeport Women’s Machinist Union members were jailed along with Vervane, including Helen Chisaski, Ruth Scott, Carrie Weaver, and Eva Weaver. Vervane and the women had participated in the NWP’s “watchfire” demonstration, in which President Woodrow Wilson’s speeches were burned by the suffragists outside the Whitehouse. According to the January 16, 1919 edition of the Hartford Courant, the women were “charged with starting a fire on government property.” All five women were sentenced to five days in jail.

The NWP was founded by national suffragist Alice Paul in order to work for the immediate passage of a federal women’s suffrage amendment that would secure women’s right to vote. The NWP used controversial campaign tactics, like the “watchfire” demonstration outside the Whitehouse that Vervane and the Bridgeport women munitions workers took part in during January 1919. The NWP used these dramatic demonstrations and the subsequent arrests of the suffragists, to draw national attention to the cause of women’s suffrage and the inaction of President Wilson and Congress in passing a federal women’s suffrage amendment.

Thanks to the efforts of suffragists like Vervane and the Bridgeport women munitions workers, finally, on June 4, 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment which reads, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” By August 1920, the necessary 36 states had ratified the amendment, securing women’s right to vote across the United States.