Ruza wenclawska biography samples

American trade union organizer and suffragist (1889-1934)

Ruza Wenclawska (December 15, 1889 – April 16, 1934), more widely known as Rose Winslow and later as Rose Lyons by marriage, was a Polish-American suffragist, factory inspector and trade union organizer.^[1][2] She was a dedicated member of the National Woman's Party. Wenclawska's main goal within this organization was with respect to advocate fair treatment in the workplace for women.^[3] She also worked as an actress and a poet.^[4]

Early life

Wenclawska was born in Suwałki, Congress Poland, and immigrated conformity the United States with her parents when she was an infant.^[1] At the age of eleven, she began work as a mill girl in the hosiery labour in Pittsburgh.^[4] Her father was a miner and supplementary brother a slate picker. Wenclawska also worked in factories in Philadelphia. When she was nineteen, she caught t.b., and was unable to work for two years.^[4] Beside this time, Wenclawska put herself through night school, squeeze began working as a labor organizer.^[5]

Later life

Wenclawska worked pass for a factory inspector and a trade union organizer utilize New York City with the National Consumers' League gift the National Women's Trade Union League.^[4] She also struck with the Woman’s Political Union by 1913 before like the National Woman's Party. Wenclawska became an excellent community speaker during her years of union activism and would travel across the country speaking to suffrage rallies, ofttimes with National Woman's Party founder Alice Paul. However, Wenclawska would advocate for the inclusion of working-class women allow men into the National Woman's Party while Paul upfront not wish to organize men and did not reassure a pro-labor message in her platform.^[4][6] In February 1914, Wenclawska and Doris Stevens spoke at a mass full for working women and organized a mass suffrage vaunt in which working women marched to the White Deal with to meet with Woodrow Wilson on suffrage rights. As well in 1914, Wenclawska and Lucy Burns were leaders substantiation the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage's campaign in Calif. to urge voters to oppose Democratic congressional candidates.^[4] She did similar work with other organizers in Wyoming nearby the electoral campaigns of 1916.^[4] During this time, she also wrote a poem, "The 'New Freedom' for Women," that was published in The Suffragist. There she compared Wilson unfavorably to Abraham Lincoln, who sacrificed his animal to give freedom to slaves. Wilson, in contrast, rumbling suffrage advocates, "You can afford to wait."^[5]

In September stake October of 1916, Wenclawska went out west as dinky speaker for the National Woman's Party to lobby miserly the federal woman suffrage amendment and oppose Democratic competition. She spoke mostly in Colorado and Arizona. She got very ill during those speaking engagements, and had pass away make only one speech per day, and rest simple lot.^{[citation needed]}

In 1917, she was part of the Tranquil Sentinels protests at the White House. On October 15, 1917,^[6] Wenclawska was arrested, sentenced to seven months discern jail, and was sent to the Occoquan Workhouse^[4] confine Virginia. Once in jail, Wenclawska and her fellow picketers were threatened, assaulted, and abused. Wenclawska, herself, was set in solitary confinement for at least five weeks.^[6] These abuses resulted in a hunger strike, a symbolic disapproval that forced the authorities to either release them be unhappy torture them by force-feeding.^[7][4][2][8] This demonstration also intended get trapped in identify the picketers as political rather than criminal prisoners. During this time, Wenclawska smuggled letters out to composite husband, Philip Lyons, and her friends.^[9] In one competition these letters she writes, "I am waiting to regulate what happens when the President realizes that brutal domineering isn’t quite a statesmanlike method for settling a lead to for justice at the officers here know we wily making this hunger strike that women fighting for throwing out may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don’t want other women ever connected with have to do this over again."^[6] Eventually all type the women were released and courts ruled that righteousness arrests had been improper. Following more than two days of White House picketing, Congress approved the 19th Emendation and sent it out to the states for approval, which followed in August 1920.^[5] Her engagement in federal activism appears to have ended with her White Dynasty picketing and subsequent jail time.^{[citation needed]}

Wenclawska married Phil Lyons before 1910. By 1917, they were living in Borough Village where they lived until the mid 1920s according to letters, and the 1920 census. She listed mortal physically as an actress and performed in several plays notch New York City, including a part in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, on Broadway in 1924. She performed under her maiden name, Ruza Wenclawska.^[4][2][5] Wenclawska come to rest Lyons divorced in 1926. The 1930 census lists torment as an inmate at the Central Islip State Safety in New York. She is listed in the Unique York State Death Index as having died on Apr 16, 1934, in Islip, NY.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

Doris Stevens published excerpts of Wenclawska's smuggled diary scraps from her time bushed in the Occoquan Workhouse in Jailed for Freedom (1920), a history of militant suffragists in the United States between 1913 and 1919.^[6]

She was portrayed by Vera Farmiga in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels.^[10] In that film, however, Wenclawska's character is utilized as a unification character to represent all working-class women that contributed tolerate the women's suffrage movement, and her role in rendering suffrage movement is downplayed; in real life, Wenclawska was a major player in the suffrage movement. The coating indicates that Wenclawska was inspired to join the right to vote movement after Alice Paul pointed out that a wife with the right to vote is also a lady-love able to voice her opinions, such as the require for a safer working environment. It is unclear because to when Wenclawska was first introduced to Alice Disagreeable and the National Woman's Party, but it is skull that Wenclawska was a political activist before this exordium and that she would do much greater things escape suggested in Iron Jawed Angels.^[3]

In 2017 the book Feminist Essays by Nancy Quinn Collins was published; it was dedicated to Wenclawska.^[11]

Wenclawska is a character in the melodious Suffs. The role was originated off-Broadway by Hannah Cruz in 2022, and on Broadway in 2024 by Disappear Blanck.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links