My great-great grandmother the suffragist
Election day is upon us once again and I usually post this story online each year. It began on my LiveJournal and migrated to Facebook and each year I repost it. This year I've decided to give it a permanent home here. In November 1917 my great-great-grandmother Kate Stafford went to Washington during the movement to adopt the 19th amendment. After picketing and demonstrations at the White House on November 10 she was arrested with 41 other women. She refused to pay a twenty-five dollar fine for allegedly obstructing traffic and on November 12 she was sentenced to thirty days in Occoquan Prison, a Virginia workhouse. She survived the “Night of Terror” and began a four-day hunger strike. On November 27, government authorities released the suffragists; they had served fourteen days. A month later, Kate was one of 97 guests of honor at a dinner in Washington, D.C. during the NWP (National Women’s Party) National Convention where suffrage leader Alice Paul (see note below) gifted each