Here is my Grandmother, Hattie Kruger, in front of the White House fence, yes fence, petitioning for the right of women to vote. Shortly thereafter she was imprisoned by Wilson for daring to ask for the vote. For some of the current crowd she was the Socialist candidate for the House in New York in 1916 and for NY Treasurer in 1920.
Hattie became a major player in the Socialist Party during the 1912 through the 1920 period. It appears that she may have started in Buffalo and then continued as she progressed through her time in Philadelphia if that was correct. However there was and is a Lighthouse Medical Clinic and Mental Health Clinic in Buffalo and this may likely be where she was. Her business address was Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo and that address is close to the current Lighthouse Medical Clinic3. However this Buffalo clinic is of recent establishment and unlike the Philadelphia is not nor ever was a settlement house.
A focal point for the Women's movement to vote was the National Woman's Party. From the Library of Congress the following description:
Founded in 1913 as the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU), the National Woman's Party (NWP) was instrumental in raising public awareness of the women's suffrage campaign. Using a variety of tactics, the party successfully pressured President Woodrow Wilson, members of Congress, and state legislators to support passage of a 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing women nationwide the right to vote. In so doing, the NWP established a legacy defending the exercise of free speech, free assembly, and the right to dissent. NWP members picket outside the International Amphitheater in Chicago, where Woodrow Wilson delivers a speech. October 20, 1916. The NWP effectively commanded the attention of politicians and the public through its aggressive agitation, relentless lobbying, clever publicity stunts, and creative examples of civil disobedience and nonviolent confrontation. Its tactics were versatile and imaginative, drawing inspiration from a variety of sources–including the British suffrage campaign, the American labor movement, and the temperance, antislavery, and early women's rights campaigns in the United States. Traditional lobbying and petitioning were a mainstay of NWP members, but these activities were supplemented by other more public actions–including parades, pageants, street speaking, and demonstrations. The party eventually realized that it needed to escalate its pressure and adopt even more aggressive tactics. Most important among these was picketing the White House over many months, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of many suffragists. The willingness of NWP pickets to be arrested, their campaign for recognition as political prisoners rather than as criminals, and their acts of civil disobedience in jail shocked the nation and brought attention and support to their cause. Through constant agitation, the NWP effectively compelled President Wilson to support a federal woman suffrage amendment. Similar pressure on national and state legislators led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
The NWP became an aggressive and assertive group of women across the country that used demonstrations and the media to press for the right of women to vote. This movement led to the November 1917 confrontation. It seems clear from the record that Hattie was a member of the NWP. In the records of her arrest she is assigned that attribution. In those days Socialists sought better living conditions not free money. Hattie worked at Seaview TB clinic for New York City and ironically dies there when it became an old age home. Perhaps some can learn from Hattie and her compatriots.
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