Who is Lucy Burns?

Lucy burns was instrumental in getting women the right to vote. She was good friends with Alice Paul and together the two of them formed the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS).

Lucy burns was born on July 28, 1879 into an Irish catholic family living in Brooklyn, New York. She was highly intelligent and attended both Yale University and Vassar College before becoming an English teacher at Erasmus High School. When she was twenty seven she moved to Germany to study languages. Two years later in 1908 she came back to New York to continue teaching English. Just three years later she would travel back to the United Kingdom to attend Oxford.

While in England Lucy joined the Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and she was even given a medal for the bravery she exhibited during protests that resulted in several arrests and while imprisoned; hunger strikes. It was here she met Alice Paul and the two of them returned home to form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS) which later became the National Woman's Party (NWP.) Lucy used some of the militant methods she had used in the UK here in the United States. She organized huge demonstrations as well as daily picketing of the White House.

During her fight for women's suffrage Lucy Burns was arrested six times and detained for countless others, but she may be most famous for her 1917 incarceration that resulted from picketing the White House. She and other NWP members (including Alice Paul) were locked up in the Occoquan Workhouse. The group organized a nineteen day hunger strike. Many of the women, including Lucy, suffered through being beaten and force fed. The women stayed strong and served their time. When she wasn't being arrested she was giving speeches to rally men and women to the cause. Doris Stevens wrote In Jailed for Freedom, "Her talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with her audience."