Lucy Burns (1879 - 1966)
Mon Jul 28, 1879
Image: Lucy Burns in Occoquan Workhouse, Washington [loc.gov]
Lucy Burns, born on this day in 1879, was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate who was arrested and force-fed multiple times as part of a campaign of direct action in the United Kingdom and United States.
She was born on July 28th, 1879, to an affluent Irish Catholic family in New York. Burns was a prodigious student who studied at the universities of Yale and Columbia in the United States, Oxford in the United Kingdom, and Bonn and Berlin in Germany.
Burns became involved in suffragette activism while traveling in Britain, becoming employed by and organizing with the Women's Social and Political Union.
Working with her friend Alice Paul, Burns engaged in multiple acts of rebellion while in Britain, getting arrested and force-fed when attempting to hunger strike. When Burns refused to open her mouth, the feeding tube was inserted up her nostril, causing severe nosebleeds.
One incident involving Burns and Paul that led to such treatment was crashing the London Lord Mayor's Ball, mingling with guests before approaching Winston Churchill with a hidden banner shouting "How can you dine here while women are starving in prison?"
Burns and other suffrage activists in the U.S. successfully got Congress to vote on a women's suffrage amendment in 1918, however it narrowly failed in the Senate. It was later passed and officially ratified on August 18th, 1920.
After achieving this goal, Burns stated "I don't want to do anything more. I think we have done all this for women, and we have sacrificed everything we possessed for them, and now let them fight for it now. I am not going to fight anymore" and retired from public life.
- Date: 1879-07-28
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.loc.gov, suffragistmemorial.org.
- Tags: #Feminism, #Birthdays.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org