Introduction by Edith Mayo, Curator, Smithsonian Institution

Includes historic photo, illustration, biographical information,
appendices, index, and suggested reading list.

For more than seventy years women fought a long and arduous battle to acquire the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, securing women’s right to vote. Today, few Americans are aware of this chapter in our history and its tremendous political and social significance. Few know that suffragists took militant, yet nonviolent action in the final years of the battle. Led by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, hundreds of women were illegally arrested over a three-year period for picketing the White House, holding demonstrations, mass marches, hunger strikes, and other dramatic public actions.Jailed for Freedom gives a firsthand account of those final militant years, filled with intrigue, frustration, commitment, failure, and ultimately, a hard-one victory.

Carol O’Hare has a degree from the University of Minnesota and Boston University, with a special interest in women’s history. She edited How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an influential 19th Century Woman by Frances Willard, resurrecting a century-old classic.

Edith Mayo was a curator in the Division of Political History, National Museum of American History, and was an historian at the Smithsonian Institution for more than twenty years.