Partner Consuelo Reyes-Calderon
Queer Places:
Wilmington Friends School, 101 School Rd, Wilmington, DE 19803, Stati Uniti
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave, Swarthmore, PA 19081, Stati Uniti
Mabel
Vernon (September 19, 1883 – September 2, 1975) was a U.S. suffragist,
pacifist, and a national leader in the United States suffrage movement. She
was a Quaker and a member of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Vernon
was inspired by the methods used by the Women's Social and Political Union in
Britain. Vernon was one of the principal members of the Congressional Union
for Women Suffrage (CUWS) alongside Olympia Brown,
Inez Milholland,
Crystal
Eastman, Lucy Burns, and Alice
Paul, and helped to organize the Silent Sentinels protests that involved
daily picketing of Woodrow Wilson's White House.
Mabel Vernon was born on September 19, 1883 in Wilmington, Delaware. She
graduated from Wilmington Friends School in 1901. She went on to attend
Swarthmore College where she was a year ahead of Alice Paul.[1]
Vernon graduated from Swarthmore in 1906. She then became a teacher at Radnor
High School in Wayne, Pennsylvania where she taught Latin and German.[2]
VVernon attended the 1912 convention of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, where she was an usher. She was the first paid organizer that
Alice Paul recruited. Vernon joined Lucy Burns and Paul as part of NAWSA's
Congressional Committee to organize the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 that was
to occur the following March where it would coincide with the inauguration of
Woodrow Wilson. During the Summer of 1913, Vernon and Edith Marsden campaigned
for suffrage in Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Long Island.[3]
IIn 1914, Vernon organized for the Congressional Union, travelling through
the Southwestern United States and making her way north through California
before arriving in Nevada.[4]
An accomplished fundraiser,[5]
she assisted Anne Martin in Nevada, who was working for NAWSA on a referendum
campaign. After Martin got into a debate with Senator Key Pittman,
Anna Howard Shaw
wrote her an angry letter accusing her of being duped by Vernon and the CU.[6]
Late in 1915, Vernon organized greeting parades ahead of Sara Bard Field, who
was driving a petition with 500,000 signatures across the United States to be
presented to President Woodrow Wilson in Washington D.C.[7][8]
AAt a June 1916 convention in Chicago, women from states that had granted
them the right to vote gathered to form the National Woman's Party. The
Democratic Party had adopted a suffrage plank that advocated state's rights to
choose suffrage, but continued to block national suffrage. Frustrated with the
situation, Vernon interrupted President Woodrow Wilson during a speech he was
giving at the dedication of the Labor Temple in Washington on July 4,
querying, "Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of
all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of women?"
Wilson dismissed the question and when Vernon repeated the question again
later, police ordered her to leave the meeting.[9]
VVernon was a key organizer of the campaign of the Silent Sentinels that
began in January 10, 1917. She was responsible for ensuring that there were
enough volunteers each day to picket the White House.[10]
Vernon and Paul organized themed days for the picket where all of the
volunteers were from certain states or from certain professions.[11]
Their strategy ensured consistent press coverage and the eighteen-month
campaign saw thousands of women participate and culminated in the arrests of
many picketers and the "Night of Terror".[12]
At a convention in March 1917, it was decided to merge the Congressional
Union and the National Woman's Party. Following the vote, Vernon was selected
to be Secretary of the NWP.[13]
After President Wilson announced the American entry into World War I, a
committee was able to secure an audience with Wilson on the issue of suffrage.
Doris Stevens, in her memoir Jailed for Freedom, wrote that the
President was moved when Mabel Vernon said "If the right of those who submit
to authority to have a voice in their own government is so sacred a cause to
foreign people as to constitute the reason for our entering the international
war in its defense, will you not, Mr. President, give immediate aid to the
measure before Congress demanding self-government for the women of this
country?"[14]
Vernon was among the first six women who were arrested while picketing the
White House, under charges of "obstructing the traffic." They were tried and
found guilty on June 26, 1917 and each was ordered to pay a 25 dollar fine or
spend three days in jail. All of the women insisted they were innocent and
refused to pay the fine.[15]
Following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, during the 1920s, Vernon
supported women candidates for Congress and lobbied on behalf of the Equal
Rights Amendment.[16]
VVernon went to Columbia University where she earned a master's degree in
political science in 1924.[2]
Mabel Vernon and Mary Moss Wellborn
IIn 1930, Vernon turned her attention from the women's movement to focus on
international relations and peace. She was a proponent of Latin American
rights and disarmament.[17]
Vernon joined the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1930.
She was director of the Peoples Mandate Committee for Inter-American Peace and
Cooperation in the 1940s.[18]
She was a member of the Inter-American delegation to the foundation of the
United Nations.[17]
BBeginning in 1951, Vernon lived with her companion
Consuelo Reyes-Calderon in Washington, D.C.[19]
Vernon died on September 2, 1975.
IIn the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels she was portrayed by Brooke
Smith.[20]
However, the film doesn't depict her being arrested and imprisoned: instead,
she is shown managing the NWP during Alice Paul's incarceration, including
working with lawyers on appeals for the suffragettes.
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Vernon