Shelter Island students hear pleas for ‘informed’ voting

They came because it was required and because the Shelter Island League of Women Voters was treating them to a pizza and soda lunch.

But they left three hours later with an appreciation of what it means to vote.

The Shelter Island High School juniors and seniors watched the 2004 film “Iron Jawed Angels” with an all-star cast led by Hillary Swank, breaking out in spontaneous applause at the end.

And while they were rushing off to after-school activities and jobs and couldn’t pause to talk about what they had seen, their faces said it all.

The film offers a history of the women’s suffrage movement and the harsh road tread by those who led what was an often brutal battle to win the right to vote.

It may seem “peculiar” to today’s students to think that women didn’t have the right to vote until 1920, Councilwoman Chris Lewis told the students at the outset. Black men were enfranchised following the Civil War, but women of any race were ignored until the 1920s, she added.

It’s important that you be informed and vote, Ms. Lewis said, pointing out that she sometimes hears from people that they vote “no” on all propositions, even when they don’t understand what’s involved.

“Sometimes they’ve voted themselves out of a very good deal,” she added.

“You’re not going to love a lot of what you see,” she warned the students about the film, but hoped they would think about it.

League member Nancy Jaicks recounted a bit of the history of the suffrage movement before the film rolled.

That the women demonstrating were looked at as “no better than anarchists and draft dodgers” was first evidenced by those who fought them — including, for many years, President Woodrow Wilson, according to the film.

Wilson gave voice to words about the importance of democracy while being mocked by the demonstrators for denying women the right to have a voice in who governed them.

There were those who jeered and shouted at the women and pelted them with objects as they marched in front of the White House.

But the drama took full flight after the women — including their leader, Alice Paul — were dragged off to prison on charges that they were obstructing traffic with their demonstrations.

The prison scenes are dramatic, showing the women being beaten and dragged into cells. The worst of the scenes shows Hillary Swank, who portrays Ms. Paul, being force fed through tubes down her throat and up her nose after she launched a hunger strike.

Nothing seemed effective against the forces that who opposed enfranchising women, especially after President Wilson announced the United States was entering into World War I. Even Ms. Paul found herself questioning whether the cause should be put aside during the war effort.

But as word of the women’s treatment in prison appeared in the pages of the Washington Post, President Wilson ultimately bowed to pressure, endorsing the cause to pass an amendment to the Constitution to “show our women that you trust them as much as you depend on them.”

He characterized women’s suffrage then as “a vital war effort.”

It still took time before the 36 states needed to ratify the amendment occurred, with the approval in the Tennessee Legislature on August 26, 1920.