Lucy Burns

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Lucy Burns (July 28, 1879-December 22, 1966) was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a close friend of Alice Paul. Together, they formed the National Woman's Party.

Biography

Lucy Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Irish Catholic family. A gifted student, she would go on to college at Vassar and Yale before becoming an English teacher.

Burns spent part of her youth in Europe, moving at the age of twenty seven to Germany. She would eventually wind up in England, where she graduated from the famed Oxford University.

It was while in England that she met Paul, after becoming a member of the WSPU organization, which fought for women's rights in England. Burns and Paul had jail stints in England for protesting; at jail, their friendship fortified. Their battles in England towards feminine equality inspired them to continue on championing their ideals in the United States, and, upon release and return to the States, they formed the CUWS organization.

They were met with despise by many men of the era, a feeling that also expanded to women who kept conservative ideas about what a woman's role in society should be. Burns and Paul, however, persisted in fighting for women's rights, particulalrly their right to vote. After founding the National Woman's Party, the duo were among the first women to picket in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.. Although not a political party perse, the organization was bi-partisan and directed its attacks at whoever was President of the United States during the short period that they lasted, in this case, the President being Woodrow Wilson. Burns also opposed World War I, in part because it was a war decided to be fought by men and because young men were being sent and giving up their lives without much of a choice, as men were picked up to serve the United States with a draft.

Lucy Burns went to jail many times in the United States, sometimes alongside her lifelong friend Paul. They claimed that they were nothing else but political prisoners, as, most of the time, they were arrested while pickeeting at the White House.

Burns was possibly tortured and force-fed during her jail stints, something that happened to Alice Paul a lot. Lucy Burns joined her friend in hunger strikes held while jailed, to demonstrate they would not give up on their cause. Out of the better known suffragists of the era, Burns was the one that spent the most time in jail.

After women gained the right to vote in the United States, Lucy Burns went on to lead a quiet life until she died in 1966.