Occoquan Workhouse was the prison to which American suffragettes were sent in 1917 after their sustained protests for women’s voting rights at the White House. In the account of the campaign, imprisonment did not silence the protesters: their hunger strike and release were followed by further demonstrations, riots, and renewed pressure on Congress.

Place in the Suffrage Campaign

By 1913, American suffrage activism had adopted a militant model associated with the English movement. Doris Stevens and Alice Paul led a campaign of lectures, meetings, marches, and demonstrations. Women from the nine states where women could vote traveled to the Capitol to demand the vote nationwide, while a Chicago gathering developed into the Women’s Party.

The White House Picket and Imprisonment

In 1917, suffragettes began a new tactic: they stood at the White House gates with banners, sometimes chaining themselves there to prevent their removal. After six months, the protesters were stopped and sent to Occoquan Workhouse. They went on hunger strike and were eventually released. Their imprisonment thus became part of the public campaign rather than its conclusion.

Political Consequences

Further demonstrations followed the women’s release and led to the beginning of riots. The government then agreed to establish a House Committee on Woman Suffrage. The Women’s Party executive committee held a conference in Washington, and a suffrage amendment passed the House on January 10, 1918, before the Senate rejected it by two votes. Congress approved the amendment in June 1919, although the struggle for full equality continued for another decade.

Significance

Occoquan Workhouse marks the point at which protest for the national vote met the coercive power of imprisonment. The episode also shows how women’s political organizing sought to convert that pressure into public and legislative action: the picketing, confinement, hunger strike, release, and renewed demonstrations form a connected sequence in the campaign’s advance, even though suffrage remained contested after the amendment’s passage through Congress.