The suffragists were heroes, right? They were saints, don’t you think? Well, maybe they were heroes, but they weren’t saints. Researching my books, I’ve found that the suffragists were stellar myth-makers. They weren’t above burnishing their reputations and their actions through exaggeration and outright lies.

Take, for example, the famous March 3, 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Eight thousand women (and men!) marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol Building to the Treasury Building, a distance of about two and a half miles.

People poured in from all over the country to participate in, or to watch, the parade. Railroad companies added hundreds of extra trains to accommodate the crowds. The parade organizers planned the parade for just this exact day, because not only were people coming for the suffrage parade, they were in D.C. for President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration the next day. These suffragists were savvy!

The only problem was that the inaugural crowd had been swarming into the city for a week. The mobs of mostly men spent their time frequenting the saloons and public houses, and they were drunk and rowdy. They’d thrown off the restraints of polite society, and when the parade began, they harassed and attacked the women. Three hundred women were injured, one hundred of them taken to local hospitals.

Seize the moment!

Because of the failure of the police to protect the women, a congressional hearing was called after the disastrous parade to investigate. This was a tremendous opportunity for the women to enshrine the parade in myth!

In accounts written by the suffragists after the parade, they love to relate one scene in particular. In the telling, Woodrow Wilson arrives at Union Station only to find that the station is deserted. There are no cheering crowds to greet him..

“One of the incoming president’s staff asked, ‘Where are all the people?’

“‘Watching the suffrage parade,’ the police told him.” *

Very inspirational! But, alas, very untrue. Yes, mobs of people were watching the parade, but mobs of people also showed up at Union Station to greet and cheer Wilson as he made his way from a train chartered by Princeton University students (his alma mater) to the Presidential Suite at the station. The moment was fully covered in the newspapers.

The Washington Herald was there

I know you can’t believe everything you read in the paper, but this is a very detailed, almost moment by moment account of Wilson’s arrival. I suppose it could have been dreamed up by the writer. It’s been known to happen, especially in the newspaper environment of the early 1900s. Even the Library of Congress includes the supposed ghost scene in its account of the parade.

But I tend to believe this newspaper article contains the truth of the moment. Generally, people of this era did not speak in sound bites, so I become suspicious when I see a pithy statement like this. People ascribe all sorts of sayings to Susan B. Anthony — “Independence is Happiness!” —but you have question these neat, repeatable clips. (Beware BrainyQuote!)

Nothing but the truth

In fact, here is a photo taken at Union Station on March 3, 1913. I think President Wilson got quite a hearty welcome!

In my next post, we’ll poke into what really happened when the militant suffragists picketed the White House. Did they really chain themselves to the fence? Did they set fires on the White House lawn? You decide.

• * Both suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt (Woman Suffrage and Politics) and suffrage historian Doris Stevens (Jailed for Freedom) repeat this scene in their books. They go so far as to say that President Woodrow Wilson himself asked, quite forlornly, where everyone was!