Arthur Alexis Birney

March is Women’s History Month and PBS’s American Experience recently reminded us about the early twentieth-century activism that formed the background for Rosa Sutton’s crusade for justice for her dead son. Between 1900 and 1910 women’s determination to gain the right to vote increased. Initial efforts, however, did not include Black women who fought their own battles for suffrage, but that’s another story. Take a look at this terrific video of Rosa’s contemporaries marching for women’s suffrage in Washington, DC. in 1913. Notice the reaction of the men surrounding these demanding women. They were not asking – they insisted on the right to vote and the men were not happy; but it would take seven more years until the 19th amendment passed. For a look at the whole story, see the series on The Vote, on PBS Passport. (Yes, this is a shameless plug for PBS, which needs our help now more than ever.)

Rosa derived some of her strength from being the seventh of 12 children in a pioneer family; she was feisty by nature and not always easy to live with. But her determination also came from the reform-minded world of the Progressive Era. In 1907, novelist Jack London wrote, “never in the history of the world was society in such terrific flux as it is right now.” Americans were better educated than ever before, and activists fought vigorously to solve social, economic and political problems. Plus Rosa had a lot of men who helped her. Some of them were members of Congress.

In August 1909, the attorney for the Marines who were present when Jimmie Sutton died, had attacked Rosa in no uncertain terms in the naval courtroom in Annapolis. His words reached the American public through their ever-present press corps. Rosa was not sad about her son’s death, Arthur Birney proclaimed, she was a “hysterical woman”… full of “malignant hatred.” Her outbursts in the courtroom were not evidence of “the sorrow of a bereaved parent.” “They rather evidence the ferocity of a tigress.”**

But Mr. Birney’s accusations only made Rosa’s determination to save her own reputation and that of her son even stronger. And then, on May 22, 1910, an intriguing story appeared in the Los Angeles Times under the headline “Sister of Dead Cadet Announces Her Mother’s Campaign Plans.” Daysie Mae Sutton* “affirmed the statement that her mother… would run for Congress as a means of influencing legislation” related to her son’s death. By then Rosa’s “righteous indignation,” a phrase coined by one of her contemporaries, investigative journalist Ida M. Tarbell, had led her to consider a political future.

And the women attacked by the men who surrounded them in the 1913 march in Washington, DC. would continue demanding what they had fought for since 1848.

For another take on how important it is for all Americans to participate in our political process, see what Edna Ferber had to say in 1940.

Soon the new edition of A Soul on Trial ,available for the first time in paperback and as an e-book, will tell you all about what happened to this demanding tigress from another era.

Daysie Mae Sutton Hall

* Full disclosure Daysie Mae Sutton was the grandmother I never met. She died of breast cancer in 1930.

** Disclaimer: There is no sign that Rosa was obsessively strict as a parent though, like a real tigress, she would fight to the death to defend her kids. Apologies to Amy Chua.